enne📚 reviewed Precursor by C.J. Cherryh (Foreigner, #4)
Precursor
3.5 stars
This is the first book of the second trilogy of CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series. Despite deeply enjoying the whole twenty two book series, my recommendation is that these first six books are the strongest subset to get a picture of everything this series is doing. (Cherryh announced this year that she can no longer write due to health issues, and so the final trilogy will likely never be finished.)
The first trilogy establishes the planet-side political impacts of the human spaceship returning to the Atevi planet, and this second trilogy is all about going to the space station and trying to reconcile its politics and messes. (Also, how can you not love this extremely 90's-era book cover. Action pose! Starship!)
Perspective had been a tool of the trade for the paidhiin, but Bren had never reached so far outside himself as to try to shed two cultures, …
This is the first book of the second trilogy of CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series. Despite deeply enjoying the whole twenty two book series, my recommendation is that these first six books are the strongest subset to get a picture of everything this series is doing. (Cherryh announced this year that she can no longer write due to health issues, and so the final trilogy will likely never be finished.)
The first trilogy establishes the planet-side political impacts of the human spaceship returning to the Atevi planet, and this second trilogy is all about going to the space station and trying to reconcile its politics and messes. (Also, how can you not love this extremely 90's-era book cover. Action pose! Starship!)
Perspective had been a tool of the trade for the paidhiin, but Bren had never reached so far outside himself as to try to shed two cultures, his own, and the atevi one, at once, and think in a third.
What's especially great about this trilogy to me is that there's such a psychological difference in the colonial planetside humans and the shipside ones, and it's fun seeing both Bren and the atevi try to interface with the obstinate, rules-based ship hierarchy and to watch the atevi be continually underestimated.
It was absolutely the antithesis of hand-crafted Malguri. His ancestors had made this place. . . and he didn’t recognize it. Heart and mind, he didn’t recognize it.
Similarly, I also love the detail of Bren being just as discomfited by the aesthetics of station life as his atevi associates. But, I also love the way that his staff manages to produce miracles of food and aesthetics and turn their quarters into a place that they can recognize.