Deliverer by CJ Cherryh

This book closes the third trilogy of the Foreigner series, the trilogy about the coup against Tabini. Days after the end of the last book, an Eastern lord working with the still-alive pretender kidnaps Tabini’s heir, Cajeiri. Bren and his friends head east to try and recover the eight-year-old boy. While there, Cherryh fleshes out the East to a depth she hasn’t before. In the opening book of the whole series, Ilisidi kidnaps Bren to the East, but Bren doesn’t yet understand what he should, and what he knows now. So, in this book, the readers finally come to grips with the East as a culture and political force, as well as some of the characters who exist out there. This showing that Cherryh does helps add complexity to the whole series. She often recasts past events in the light of future information, and here this whole book does that. But even within this book, the early dinner with the Eastern lords in the western capital is consistently shifting in the characters’ understandings as new information comes to light. Nothing is forgotten or unimportant.

It had been five days since the shooting stopped. They had had time to do a bit of mopping-up, some of it bloody, and they had done a bit of repair—and now messages flowed. Air service resumed, though it was sporadic. The trains ran.

But the most surprising aspect is that she adds a second voice. The whole series has been solely from Bren’s point of view up until now, when Cajeiri gets a voice as well. This addition helps solidify the focus of this third trilogy on the heir. This tactic fits this book into Cherryh’s ouvre more directly—she usually has multiple points of view that the reader follows. The immediate impetus for this appears to be Cajeiri’s kidnapping—it’s hard to discuss the kidnapped with Cherryh’s tightly focused, third person narrative when Bren is elsewhere. So, Cajeiri gets a voice, and he’s an eight year old boy. A remarkable boy, sure, whose important life experiences outweigh most adults, but he’s still eight and chafing under adult control.

Well, he supposed he had had adventures enough for one year at least, riding on mecheiti and buses and trains and being shot at—he had shot a man himself, because he had to, to save their lives, but he had no wish to remember that part, which was not glorious, or an adventure, or anything but terrible. He thought it ought to have changed him—but it was mostly just not there in his thinking.

In terms of the counter-revolution, this book shows the pretender shuffling his plans for the opportunity of getting control of Cajeiri. In other words, the last gasp of the pretender. And this last gasp intrigues me in that it shows something Bren’s perspective doesn’t: the pretender still thinks he has a chance. I don’t think he’s stupid, due to the success of his earlier coup, so somebody is out there supporting him. Somebody is on his side. And Bren and Ilisidi rush into a rescue attempt without knowing who, because the rescue attempt is something they can do.

At very least, it was a plan, and it was something to do, rather than sit in the bed and be scared. And when he got out, oh, some people were going to be in trouble.

The theme here is doing what you can when you can. The pretender has an allied lord kidnap Cajeiri, Cajeiri escapes, Bren kills the pretender, Ilisidi tries to patch up relations with her cousin, and all are simply doing the best of limited options available to them. The kidnapping forces events to happen, pushes the characters to reactions. But Cajeiri could’ve just as easily submitted instead of attempting escape based on the Count of Monte Cristo. Ilisidi could’ve asked somebody else to attempt rescue. Bren could’ve held his fire at the end. The pretender could’ve surrendered. But no, these characters have motivations and priorities that drive them to these actions. It’s an important warning to examine where habits and priorities could drive anybody.

He hated most of all being shunted aside and told he was a child. Most of all—loneliness, after being in the center of things, was entirely unjust, and such injustice—hurt. Hurt made him sulk. And sulking only worried the servants and brought them to hover around him.

So, that first part. Beyond being Cherryh’s usual contemplative context-setting, this introduces a kid unhappy with what his life is offering him at the moment. And the whole thing seems a bit too overlong before the kidnapping happens. The last book was a split narrative—in the house, convoy to the capital, and retaking power being three distinct portions. The book before that was split between on the space ship, and then the counter-revolution. But this book starts out without much tension—too much telling and not enough showing of tension. Then Cajeiri gets kidnapped and the tension explodes, but I wish there was some other opening here, something to get the tension going right off the bat, or earlier. I wondered why, after Tabini took power, this trilogy was still progressing. Well, because the pretender needed to die, but he’s hardly discussed throughout. Anyways, I liked the book, but some minor dissatisfaction exists. The lander seems like it could be interpreted as a deus ex machina, but it's been so heavily discussed that I didn't take it that way.

Pretender by CJ Cherryh

The second of the counter-revolution trilogy within the larger Foreigner series. The setup at the end of the last book⁠—getting everybody into one place except the pretender to the throne⁠—explodes here. Battles take place in the house they’re all stuffed into, enemy Assassin’s Guild shows up in the house, and then everybody gets on busses, planes, and trains and heads into the capital to try and take back power. Followed, for the first time in this series, a sort of epilogue. I mean, the fighting stops about two chapters before the book ends⁠—I expect Cherryh to end her books right after the central conflict is resolved. Her typical tactic is to start somewhere where the tension isn't immediately apparent yet, build out the characters and context for the first third of the book which increases the tension drastically, then an explosion of action for two thirds of the book, and end about ten pages before the reader fully grasps what's going on, leaving the book to further unravel in the reader's mind—which works because of the rationality driving the characters. But here she pauses and shows some of the fallout, the start of knitting the world back together after the coup and counter-revolution. This pacing works for me. Instead of sitting and contemplating potential fallout⁠—like in the last trilogy how they rescue the Reunion stationers, then the next book starts with them about to drop out of lightspeed into atevi space, and readers must fill in the year-long gap. Here we get a sense of what happens in that gap, and it shines. Instead of ending on a bang, Cherryh lets us down slowly. I hope this tactic is something she’ll use again in the future. It’s great to see an author experimenting with her story-telling tactics this late in her career.

Ilisidi snapped, the head of the cane tucked against her chest. "Damned fools! Two years of managing for themselves and they develop their own channels, excluding all higher authority! Delusions. Delusions of competency. This will not be acceptable."

Political priorities rule this book, as clans come and go and discuss other clans. There’s complexity and foreshadowing throughout. But, as a reader who doesn’t exist in this world, it would be easy for an author to lose me here. Yet Cherryh doesn’t forget her readers. She knows that her readers don’t need to get lost in the details, but that her characters do. So she communicates enough to show and tell Bren getting lost in the details, but not enough to stress the reader’s patience. It’s a fine line and she walks it well.

"There is word of other foreigners, unknown to us—" A small murmur that quickly faded as he continued, "—but there will always be foreigners. The universe is very large. The more we know, as a world, the more authority we have."

The theme of this book simply shows change, and all that changes because of change. Everything is interconnected⁠—hence the complex loyalties of the clans discussed. And as technology has come and changed the world, in ways Bren and Tabini had planned for, it has done far more. Unexpected change happens around every atevi and how they react to the changing technology. In other words, everything that we learned through the last seven books has changed⁠—including how the main characters react to that change. Tabini and Bren react, plan, and act, worried about timing and collateral damage throughout. It seems Cherryh concludes that change just is, not that it’s good or bad. But how one reacts to that change does start to show positives and negatives, and it’s the important aspect.

They all had changed. The world had changed. And changed again.

One thing Cherryh dwells on echoes me learning about Beowulf in college. In Beowulf the old sword is better because it has lasted, proving that it was made well. In our day and age, the new phone is better because it has the latest and greatest. This story shows and tries to explain a culture going through that change. Atevi culture is big on traditions and hierarchy. Within this general preference, the traditionalists hold much influence. The old man whose house they occupy spent top dollar for security, automobiles, etc, and expects them to last as heirlooms like his other collections, yet the new comes in and outperforms the old. His secure phones endanger everybody instead of protecting, act more like megaphones. This story helps illuminate a lot of the industrial revolution underpinnings of the whole series.

No, no, no, their lord would say: he bought quality to defend his house and his province. Quality items once purchased ought to be good for decades if not the next generation—Lord Tatiseigi had no understanding at all of how radically the advent of electronics and computers had changed that basic precept of atevi economy. Quality things lasted for generations, did they not? One bought the most expensive and it was clearly going to last for decades.

And throughout all this change, where do you find the wise thing to do? What still matters? Timing, information, people, capabilities, understanding shortcomings, and keeping your head. These questions and answers face Bren and company throughout the novel, and it keeps a fascinating pace of information and action.

We have become much wiser, since. Let us deal with the next encounter at the safe distance of our station, where we and our human residents can establish our authority, take sensible charge of negotiations, and keep human fools and atevi fools—and we each have them in numbers!—from dealing with these new foreigners, who doubtless have fools of their own.

This book is great, really delving into ideas introduced in earlier books against the backdrop of counter-revolutionary fighting, and the invasion of the capital. Some of my favorite books strike this balance: action driving the characters forward, while the author delves deeply into interesting issues and character development. If I had any minor quibble, it would be that the unexpected couple of end chapters, the sort of epilogue, started off fairly directionless due to Bren not knowing what comes next⁠—Cherryh’s tightly focused voice and Bren being overwhelmed by the situation. But within a few pages it made sense and the whole thing worked brilliantly.

"Never forget confusion and folly, which always attend change, do they not?"

Destroyer by CJ Cherryh

This book begins the third trilogy of the Foreigner series. This book surprised me, as all of these books have in different ways. After settling some things with the Kyo and Reunion Station in the last book, here Bren and friends head back towards the atevi world. Upon arrival, they find that Tabini was overthrown eight months ago. This step surprised me. I took for granted Tabini’s hold on power. Yet it makes sense that he loses power—Cherryh pulls no punches, and after six books saying that too much technology too fast will break a culture, she follows through and breaks the atevi culture. Moves like this prove Cherryh’s strengths as a storyteller.

He didn’t believe in the impossible as wildly, as passionately as he once had. Knowing had gotten in the way of that. And what he knew depended on an experience that included betrayals, and his own significant failures to pursue personal relationships across very difficult boundaries of distance and profession.

At the same time, the characters worry that Tabini might be dead—nobody takes it too seriously except Bren in his deepest funks, but the rumor does run around a bit. And though Tabini shows up in the final pages, it got me thinking about these characters and this world and focusing a bit more on the heir—I question what will happen when Tabini will die. And this refocusing on Cajeiri, the heir, turns out to be a part of what this whole sub-trilogy is about. Again, strong storytelling.

He hadn’t asked himself, in those fast-moving days when the space program had been his only focus, why humans felt guilty if they didn’t spare their enemies, but, more importantly, he hadn’t asked himself why atevi had generally felt extremely guilty if they did.

The theme here combines two thoughts into one: faulty assumptions leading to poor actions on the part of the main characters and the usurper, and that home doesn’t exist. One thing Bren mentions a few times in the series is that home to the atevi is where their staff are, their servants and family and security. He starts to feel this way too. And this poignant theme rings true—I remember returning from college and things had changed. Here Bren has had no contact with atevi for two years, and the home he left differs from the home he returns to—both because of his assumptions proving false, and because he has changed. Yet his associations remain, and even though he doesn’t understand certain things as easily as he once did, his comfort still depends on his associations or friends being near.

“Goes without saying,” Gin said, “any of you or yours, in my little digs in the city. This whole scummy group will keep in touch.” Best of intentions. Best of hopes. In his experience, people didn’t ever quite get around to it . . . didn’t visit him, at least, maybe because he didn’t find the time to visit them, either. Something always intervened. Whatever direction he planned, events shoved him some other way. Some emergency came up. Ties grew fainter and fewer, especially to humans on Mospheira. Even his own family.

That slow start in space sets the stage for the second two thirds of the story, when the plot begins to rely upon Bren’s nascent counter-revolution. But it sets the stage in more subtle ways. Peace was kept on the ship through informing the newcomers from Reunion of the political stability and fresh-food paradise of the atevi planet and its station. Immediately upon dropping out of space, this assumption proves untrue. And Bren feels that he has failed those people by promising stability. Upon learning the revolution’s details, this feeling of personal failure colors his perception of events. The setup provides a strong foundation for this story.

“So what’s a letter between brothers more or less? Is the news out there that bad?”
“It may be good, or bad, or the usual scary mix of things. It’ll still touch off the crazies.”
“Oh, God, everything touches off the crazies. That’s why they’re crazy."

In all, this is a good, good book. But something keeps me from thinking it is great. Probably my own misunderstanding of the role Cajeiri later plays in events—he was kind of a secondary character until now, and I probably assumed he would continue to be and so I didn’t grasp immediately what Cherryh was doing with this story. But well worth reading and the following two books do a better job of putting Cajeiri at the fore.

He found a grin of his own in reply, thinking, damn, if we die, we die moving, don’t we, not sitting still and letting our lives fade out?

+++

No one had yet uttered a word about their destination, which might be here, or days off, but likely all this hurry was to meant put distance between them and the bus, and any likelihood of the opposition tracking Ilisidi and the boy.

+++

But he found something morally refreshing, being sore in very inconvenient places, sitting on a rock beside a gurgling spring.

+++

They started off, the young people planted firmly in the center of the column, with the dowager, and with him. For a while he listened to Nawari instructing the young people, advising the new arrivals what to do and what contingencies to consider if they should come under fire. And the dowager sternly advising Cajeiri that if he picked shelter, he should now adjust his thinking and pick shelter wide enough for three. Hell of a thing, he said to himself. Hell of a thing for three kids to have to think of. The older generation had a few things to answer for.

+++

Only over his own dead body . . . granted numerous people would happily arrange that. God, there was so much water under the bridge. Planets were so complicated, compared to the steel worlds he’d lived in the last few years.

+++

Curious how the brain wore the body out, and how it didn’t work the other way around.

+++

Damn the situation. Damn the Kadigidi. He passionately hated gunfire. It always meant someone like him hadn’t done his job. And there was far too much evidence of that all around him.

+++

Power-seeking. Political games. The old, old reason. Hell of a mess, was what it was.

+++

But where was the clue to his problems? Lurking, as always, in the dictionary, right where he’d begun.

+++

But there was no room for second thoughts. Gravity had them.

+++

There had been a danger point, if he’d only seen it. But he hadn’t read the winds. He had committed the oldest mistake of joint civilization on the planet—getting distracted by one issue, modernizing too fast, worst of all ignoring atevi hardwiring and ignoring the point that what humans might call barbarism was part and parcel of atevi problem-solving.

+++

And what could a human do to mend the damage, when the human in question had made the critical mistakes in the first place, and given his atevi superiors bad advice?

+++

But self-blame was a state of indulgence he could not afford. Until Ilisidi did, for well-thought reasons, tell him go to hell, he had to get his wits working and do something constructive, if he could only figure what that was. Dry bite of tasteless sandwich. One after the other.

+++

For a moment the paidhi stood in the vacuum-eye of a hurricane, in a low availability of information surrounded by total upheaval, and didn’t know what direction to turn first.

+++

The baji-naji emblem, that portrayal of the motive principles of the universe, chance and fortune, still decorated the bulkhead of the shuttle, still reminded them the universe, always in delicate balance, had its odd moments and was subject to forces no one could restrain—that the most secure situation and the most impossible alike could fall suddenly into chaos . . . but must exit that chaos into order, the eternal swing between the two states.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

I didn’t particularly enjoy reading Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. She held aspects of the plot and context back from the reader way too long for how heavily foreshadowed they were. She brings up a lot of ideas in this book, and she brings most of them up in interesting ways. However, while I respect some of what she does here, I also think she didn’t use her ideas perfectly. So, let me start with two things to praise unequivocally, then get on to the muddled critique.

Kneeling on St. Mary’s stone floor she had envisioned the candles and the cold, but not Lady Imeyne, waiting for Roche to make a mistake in the mass, not Eliwys or Gawyn or Rosemund. Not Father Roche, with his cutthroat’s face and worn-out hose. She could never in a hundred years, in seven hundred and thirty-four years, have imagined Agnes, with her puppy and her naughty tantrums, and her infected knee. I’m glad I came, she thought. In spite of everything.

Like Small Gods, Willis shows the good and bad of Christianity even-handedly. From Mrs. Gadson reading passages about pestilence to influenza victims, to the Bishop’s envoy’s party’s casual sexual harassment, Christianity doesn’t get a free pass from Willis. Yet she also shows Father Roche and Dunworthy and Mary all leading Christian lives full of charitable acts—even putting their lives at risk for others. I find this nuanced approach thought-provoking, which is what I want.

I wanted to come, and if I hadn’t, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were.

My final unreserved praise for this book is that this new technology is just that: technology. Time travelling capabilities, inherently fantastic technology, come off common place. The people around it show some differences with us, but they’re still people, and they treat it sort of nonchalantly. It has limitations still, like cell phones sometimes being out of reception, you can’t just time travel willy-nilly. The professors are to varying degrees befuddled by it, but largely they treat it nonchalantly. It seems pretty honest to how people treat technology and I found it well communicated.

Apocalyptic was very likely the correct term for his even thinking he could rescue Kivrin, Dunworthy thought. He was worn out by the time Colin got him back to his room, and his temp was back up. "You rest," Colin said, helping him into bed. "You can't have a relapse if you're going to rescue Kivrin."

I think the central theme of the book is love for humanity, or charity. Many of the characters are examined in light of their selflessness. Not only the main characters, Kivrin, Dunworthy, Roche, Colin, and Mary; but also the secondary characters like Mrs. Gadson, William, Sir Blewitt, Montoya, and the bellringers. Where the main characters are unambiguously oriented on the welfare of others, these secondary characters follow paths that they view as attending to the welfare of others, but that conflict with the wills of others. And that’s a major sticking point for me, as well as a tactic I respect: no character is evil. Her characters all try their best. Some are more selfish than others, sure, but by and large sticky situations result from miscommunications and mistakes more than nefarious purposes. This means that there is little tension in the book—at least between characters. No central antagonist foils the characters, Just misunderstandings and mistakes. This isn’t necessarily a poor tactic, I like books that assume evil people think they’re doing good, but it doesn’t play well here because Willis focuses on so many ideas that there is little chance for tension to grow.

“You can’t go back,” Gilchrist said. “Haven’t you heard? We’re under quarantine, thanks to Mr. Dunworthy’s carelessness.”

It seems like a second theme shows the problem of the existence of pain to Christian theology. These ideas about what love is and how to show it, mixes with ideas of ease-of-life and leaves at least Kivrin questioning faith. Yet the central takeaway comes to the black plague being the theological underpinnings of atheism, and Willis doesn’t let this particular cat out of the bag until way too late in the novel for any depth to be reached here. Again, I like this theme, but it just doesn’t occupy enough of the book to be engaging.

It was impossible to imagine it overrun with the plague, the dead carts full of bodies being pulled through the narrow streets, the colleges boarded up and abandoned, and everywhere the dying and the already dead.

I don’t really understand what the future portions try to communicate. The past seems to be what Willis wanted to write here, at least she seems more excited to write the past, as it comes off more engaging. But then there’s this future section that mirrors the black plague. And it doesn’t really make sense to me as a writing tactic because I can’t tell what Willis tries to say with it.

None of the things one frets about ever happen. Something one's never thought of does.

In short, great premise, poor book. It held way too many cards too close to the chest for far too long. The first time Willis said that Kivrin is going to 1320, and it’s a good thing she’s not going to 1348 when the black plague hit, I agreed. The second time she did, I knew she was going to 1348, not 1320. Yet it takes half or more of this book for the characters to realize what Willis has already heavy-handedly hinted to the readers. That’s a bit too much reticence with the plot for my tastes, and it helped the book lack tension, lack teeth. How can you pull the teeth from the black plague? Willis seems to have done it—by confusing the narrative with an uninspiring epidemic tale in some future that’s unfocused, and by holding her cards too close for too long. Overlong for the conclusions drawn. Similarly, the character development’s flatness hindered this book’s power—and their general annoyingness sapped enjoyment. I end up respecting and decrying almost everything Willis does here. To the point that I’ll probably read another book in this series, but not right away. I want deeper character depth.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," he began in Latin.
He hadn't sinned. He had tended the sick, shriven the dying, buried the dead. It was God who should have to beg forgiveness.
"—in thought, word, deed, and omission. I was angry with Lady Imeyne. I shouted at Maisry." He swallowed. "I had carnal thoughts of a saint of the Lord."
Carnal thoughts.
"I humbly ask pardon of God, and absolution of you, Father, if you think me worthy."
There is nothing to forgive, she wanted to say. Your sins are no sins. Carnal thoughts. We held down Rosemund and barricaded the village against a harmless boy and buried a six-month-old baby. It is the end of the world. Surely you are to be allowed a few carnal thoughts.

Explorer by CJ Cherryh

This book stands among Cherryh’s best. Bren and friends’ reuniting Phoenix and Reunion station does what it says on the tin: an exploration of places nobody from the unnamed atevi planet has ever gone, and many people still don’t believe exists. Here we go. Journey narrative, political intrigue, situations turning into clusters, and meeting an alien species; unravelling the Ramirez mystery that helped carry the last couple of books, teaching the aiji’s heir what’s what in the universe, and gunfights⁠—Bren in lots of gunfights. Well, okay, like two gunfights, but still. In one of them Bren liberates a political prisoner from as deep inside hostile territory as possible.

Figure it. If there were two humans, there were two sides, and if both had a pulse, politics would be at work somewhere in the business.

This action packed-book concludes this trilogy. One thing I want to just mention in passing about the trilogy: it follows Cherryh’s usual pacing across three books⁠—meaning that Precursor opens the three fairly tamely, then Defender ramps up the tensions and complicates the situations once understandings have been reached, then Explorer explodes with action, new information recontextualizing earlier understandings, and follows the characters through their rational courses.

“Yolanda kept her standoffishness from local culture. I didn’t. I fell far more deeply not just into downworld culture, but into atevi culture, and the one thing that both infuriates me and encourages me is that Ramirez appointed me to succeed him. Me. My view of the universe. My atevi-contaminated, impure view of the universe humans have to live in. It’s not a degree of importance I ever wanted, I’ll tell you. But the thought that Ramirez meant to do it, that he actually approved what I am—is what gives me the courage to get out of bed and go on duty.”

This specific book’s pacing also shows the strength of Cherryh’s storytelling. Her book begins just before arrival at Reunion station, which allows the scene to be set before rushing into an alien encounter, and an encounter with long-lost humans. On the brink of the unknown, Cherryh establishes the relationships between characters, then pushes them through that fog-bank, and they don’t understand what they see. They find an alien ship, the human station, and neither matches what the characters expected. Classic Cherryh pacing: set the scene through the characters, their relations, and what worries them; then explore those worries through revelations or journeys; then resolve through logical reactions by the characters; all in a mix of psychological depth, adventure, political intrigue, physical violence, and change. Solid and stunning.

Separation of nations that have once met is dangerous: that seems the most accurate expression of kyo views of politics. What has met will meet again. What cannot stay in contact is a constant danger of miscalculation. Curious notion. Possibly even demonstrable, in history. One wonders whether this is a refined philosophy, out of successful experience. One is very certain we need to go slow with this.

The story illuminates the theme: Bren and company take responsibility for solving a problem they didn’t create. Instead of leaving Reunion station to die, they roll into the area and immediately take steps to correct Ramirez’ mistake of not communicating with the kyo, Phoenix’ difficulties dealing with Reunion, atevi-human interactions, and he tries to moderate the interactions of the three human factions (ship, station, Mospheiran) and all of their subfactions (ship-Jase, ship-Sabin, ship-Guild). This strong theme advocates fixing problems when and where you find them, through humility, and not kicking the can down the road to a future generation.

Play it by ear. Adapt. Abandon the plan. Look for the new pattern in events as they fell. It was not the human view of crisis management. But it was profoundly atevi, profoundly valid. Had not such thinking even become Mospheiran, over the centuries? Had not the paidhiin worked and fought within the university and the government to get that flexibility with their neighbors installed in place of a more rigid, history-conscious policy?

Cherryh has firmly established herself as one of my favorite authors, and one of the best science fiction authors. This trilogy here, books 4-6 in the Foreigner series, certainly help that. Bren changes over the course of this book, becoming less formal and more action oriented. Finally coming to terms with the life he left behind. A great book.

Defender by CJ Cherryh

Three years after Bren and company take the space station, Bren spends the first third of the book confused at the pieces moving around the situation: himself, robots, Ramirez, Geigi, Jase, Yolanda, Ginny, Ilsidi, Tabini’s heir, a long dead ruler’s funeral, and the silence of Tabini keeping Bren in the dark. Then he spends the second two thirds helping push those pieces as fast as possible, hoping he pushes in the correct direction. All while dealing with family emergencies from a vast distance. This story of conspiracy, political intrigue, and negotiation relies on a competent Bren dealing with rapidly changing situations to come up with potential solutions. When first introduced to Bren, back in the first trilogy, Cherryh tells the reader that he works as a diplomat and translator. Yet Cherryh’s plot and characters show him like a spy: his kidnapping, torture, ignorance, and actions do not match up with what Cherryh tells about Bren. However, her we see diplomat Bren in full force. In short, Bren’s effectiveness and understanding drive the plot—thanks in large part to CJ Cherryh’s tightly focused, third person perspective.

“I don’t envy you in that regard. But you came out sane. And decent. And worthwhile. It’s what we do, more than who we are, that makes our personal lives a mess. If we didn’t do what we do for a job, ordinary people might figure out how to get along with us.”

But that doesn’t mean Bren understands everything. At many points, Bren wonders why Tabini wanted him at the funeral on the planet. But when the reveal comes a third of the way in, he realizes that Tabini didn’t need him there so much as need him away from the station. This makes sense based on Tabini’s character, as Cherryh’s characters usually make sense. I already know Tabini uses those around him as assets—he devotes himself to their safety, but only to a point. They all are expendable for the greater good, as Tabini is in charge of the greater good. But beyond that, his secretive ways and desire to double check everything make sense in this specific situation—which Bren and the reader do not understand until later in the book. Also, the atevi-human interface gets in the way, as Bren wants to like Tabini and feels slighted at Tabini keeping him in the dark. This feeling reinforces the alienness of Bren and the atevi. Alienness always works both ways.

God hope the house of cards he and Tabini had built lasted long enough to provide a pattern for the girders of a whole new world.

The plot again shows Cherryh setting up a situation, then dripping and implying information about the characters to the reader, meaning that the ending falls rationally out of the people involved. I want to dwell on this for a few more sentences because this tendency brilliantly guides a lot of Cherryh’s work, and all of the books in this Foreigner series so far. She holds back information from Bren and the reader—due to her tightly focused, third person narrative—to help set up tension and mystery. But she also pulls no punches—a passing statement early in the book that the ship is fueled and can move at any time comes home at the end when it undocks from the station. This pace of revealing information drives Cherryh’s plot pacing: slightly too long for a reveal in Voyager in Night, perfect pacing in Precursor.

“Gently, gently, young man,” Ilisidi said. “Haste only startles what you wish to catch. Stalk your desires. Don’t snatch.”

The theme here shows Bren dealing with assumptions, learning truths, and then trying to react in wise ways to the new situation. This applicable theme seems a bit broad, sure, to some extent all books are about this theme. But Cherryh really dives into the theme, throwing misunderstandings, surprises, and multiple opinions at the reader to show how Bren’s rational note-taking and thinking helps prioritize problems and isolate unknowns, suggesting ways to deal with the unknowns. And then, because she pulls no punches, we see him trying various responses, some successful, some not. This willingness to let Bren not succeed every time perfectly shows Cherryh’s strength at creating characters. If Bren ever succeeds without cost, I would stop reading these books.

Atevi relied on a rational universe. Humans on the island enclave of Mospheira had faith in miracles. Humans on the starship over their heads had more faith in a second armed starship and a planetful of allies, in a universe otherwise sparse with life.

The one thing I would say about this book is that it wouldn’t make much sense without first reading Precursor, at least. Ilsidi and Tabini are really sketched in here, as characters, and the reader could easily be lost without having some sense of how those characters react to reality. But, being a sequel in a series I think should build off of each book, this potential negative is actually a positive to me. I’m glad Cherryh didn’t spend twenty more pages explaining these two characters.

“We do not forget,” Tabini continued, as nerve and flesh all but liquefied in relief and bodyguards stood down from red alert. Tabini swept on, in possession of all attention. Thank God no program dropped. Breathing itself was at a minimum. Tabini’s oratory was all fortunate threes now, rapid, hammering into nerves still resounding to two strokes of the bell, still waiting for the resolution of their universe. “We do not break our strong connections with all that Valasi-aiji built. We do not abrogate our traditions. The more knowledge we acquire, the more we rationally comprehend the universe, the more we control our own destiny—”

One last comment here. Cherryh baits and hooks the reader, she doesn’t pull punches. But she also bait and double or triple hooks the reader. When Ramirez moves to his deathbed, Cherryh hooked me hard. I know things are going to blow up with the ship then, and maybe the station too. But then Ramirez lets out that the other station that suffered an alien attack, Reunion, has survivors aboard. Now I’m hooked again, with this juicy problem facing the characters. And right then, Ilsidi and Tabini’s heir appear on the station. And Bren’s mom starts maybe dying. And Jill leaves Toby. Cherryh just piles on the problems and the book can’t be read fast enough from there. Bait and double hook. I need to do this more in my own writing.

His security had not been idle. Never, ever think it. “So you have suspicions.”
“It’s our tendency, is it not?”

I adore this book. Where Precursor stands among Cherryh’s best work, this one falls just barely short of that. Bren doesn’t change so much as his understanding of his relationships with those around him change. And only having one character so far, that lack of change did drag the book down a bit for me. This shows a book more about adventurous negotiation than character development, and I always advocate for character development. Don’t get me wrong though: this book is about the characters, firmly about them and not the adventure, but because those characters don’t change much, the book doesn’t hit me as hard as Precursor did. However, this is probably my second favorite in the series so far. Good book. Solidly good book. Well worth the read after Precursor.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and folded his hands and stopped where he was, listening, waiting while a very sick woman tried to gather her faculties.
“First off, tell the dowager she’s a right damn bastard.”
It was no time for a translator to argue. Mitigation, however, was a reasonable tactic. “Aiji-ma, Sabin-aiji has heard our suspicions regarding Tamun and received assurances from me and Gin-aiji that we have not arranged a coup of our own. She addresses you with an untranslatable term sometimes meaning extreme disrepute, sometimes indicating respect for an opponent.”
Ilisidi’s mouth drew down in wicked satisfaction. “Return the compliment, paidhi.”
“Captain, she says you’re a right damn bastard, too.”