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meteordustThe latest and seventeenth (!) book in CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series.
Short version: mind blown.
Long version: What I love best about this series is the first contact stuff: all the interfacing between alien cultures, and its assumptions and clashes and differences wired into biology. No one does aliens like CJ Cherryh, even when - especially when - the aliens are us.
Explorer is probably my favourite of the books, with Bren making contact with the kyo, and figuring out how to communicate with them on the fly. The flashing lights sequence is one of the highlights of the whole series for me. Seriously, Bren is wasted on mediating clan politics, when he could be grappling with alien mindsets.
So I was hugely excited by the return of the kyo, after books and books of political storylines. Loved seeing the preparations, and the interactions, everything so fraught, but tentatively hopeful.
Then Bren gets invited to the kyo ship. Alone, except for his bodyguards. And holy crap, I was not expecting that next twist.
The world gets bigger and bigger - atevi and Mospheirans, and then the ship-folk, and then the Reunioners, and then the kyo. And now this biggest bombshell of all. The kyo's mysterious enemy, this nameless threat they're warring with.
Us. A human civilisation - most likely, the original human civilisation that Phoenix came from.
And Bren holds in his hands the biggest decision of his life - the knowledge that the human homeworlds are somewhere close, findable, real - and whether that should stay a secret. So much of the series has been about secrets that people have kept, often blowing up after time, and Bren uncovering the truth. But now this is something that he understands could destroy peace on the atevi world forever. That could drag them into a war not of their making. Cast everything into turmoil for atevi and human alike.
And Bren makes that call. He decides they have to stay hidden. He decides that Cullen absolutely cannot go back to his own people and reveal what he has learned. And Bren teaches him to communicate with the kyo, but I fear Cullen is terribly equipped to be anything like a paidhi.
The stakes have never been so high.
I don't know how much of this, if any, Cherryh planned when she started the series. But either way, it feels like a long fuse finally reaching its end.
Short version: mind blown.
Long version: What I love best about this series is the first contact stuff: all the interfacing between alien cultures, and its assumptions and clashes and differences wired into biology. No one does aliens like CJ Cherryh, even when - especially when - the aliens are us.
Explorer is probably my favourite of the books, with Bren making contact with the kyo, and figuring out how to communicate with them on the fly. The flashing lights sequence is one of the highlights of the whole series for me. Seriously, Bren is wasted on mediating clan politics, when he could be grappling with alien mindsets.
So I was hugely excited by the return of the kyo, after books and books of political storylines. Loved seeing the preparations, and the interactions, everything so fraught, but tentatively hopeful.
Then Bren gets invited to the kyo ship. Alone, except for his bodyguards. And holy crap, I was not expecting that next twist.
The world gets bigger and bigger - atevi and Mospheirans, and then the ship-folk, and then the Reunioners, and then the kyo. And now this biggest bombshell of all. The kyo's mysterious enemy, this nameless threat they're warring with.
Us. A human civilisation - most likely, the original human civilisation that Phoenix came from.
And Bren holds in his hands the biggest decision of his life - the knowledge that the human homeworlds are somewhere close, findable, real - and whether that should stay a secret. So much of the series has been about secrets that people have kept, often blowing up after time, and Bren uncovering the truth. But now this is something that he understands could destroy peace on the atevi world forever. That could drag them into a war not of their making. Cast everything into turmoil for atevi and human alike.
And Bren makes that call. He decides they have to stay hidden. He decides that Cullen absolutely cannot go back to his own people and reveal what he has learned. And Bren teaches him to communicate with the kyo, but I fear Cullen is terribly equipped to be anything like a paidhi.
The stakes have never been so high.
I don't know how much of this, if any, Cherryh planned when she started the series. But either way, it feels like a long fuse finally reaching its end.
