Invader

This SF series is continuing to prove itself one of the most enduring and fascinatingly social of all the hard SF's I've ever read. Book two seems to pick up very well with similar or perhaps improved pacing from the previous one, but instead of focusing so much on the linguistics issues, Bren finds himself with ever increasing responsibility and power within the Atevi world, much to the everlasting chagrin of his "people" on the island of humans.

Did he go native, selling out the other humans? Has he betrayed humanity to give all the aliens all our tech, to crowd out the advances and the possible advantage of allying with the returning spacecraft that had abandoned the humans on this world for 200 years? How dare he!

Of course, he knows show more he's just trying to keep the peace, making sure that all sides, both human and Atevi, work together and make sure no one gets left out. It helps that he's the only one to translate and make deals with both sides, for many good reasons not just cultural, but hard-wired in the alien psyche.

Except, the humans have factions and factions and they've sent a new translator to take over for Bren, and the two of them have never gotten along.

Politics and politics ensue, with Bren in the right and rising high in Atevi estimation, while all the while things keep getting gummed up anyway. :)

These are early days, with the Spaceship wanting the downwellers to regain spaceflight, fast, so they can man and refurbish the abandoned space station around the planet. Three sides could blow up into a real huge mess. And in the center is Bren. :)

I love this stuff. Translator-porn. :) Politic-Biology conflict. Technological parity.

Here's the interesting bit: The Atevi are born mathematicians. :) Everything boils down to associations and "good" number parity, down to all their surroundings, the number of rooms or the architecture, or the way they form their words, so you have to be fantastic at math just to speak with them, or it's "unfavorable" and they might just assassinate you for it. Details. :)

Of course, this means that the Atevi also have it in them to blow all humanity out of the water if they ever get their hands on some really juicy tech or even the knowledge that FTL is real.

Oops. Too late. :)

It's becoming extremely, extremely difficult to hold off on reading this entire series without stopping. :)

Delicious doesn't even begin to describe it. :) show less

Invader picks up pretty much where Foreigner left off. Bren is barely out of surgery before he's called back to work. The starship Phoenix, the one that originally brought humans to the planet, has reappeared, and everyone is concerned. What do the ship folk want? Does Mospheira plan to deal with them and, if so, where does that leave the Treaty with the atevi?

Bren, still in a bit of pain (and, at the very beginning, foggy due to pain killers), finds himself in an extremely difficult position. Deana Hanks, his eventual successor, took over his job after Tabini stashed him away during the events of the previous book, and now she refuses to leave even though it puts her in violation of the Treaty. Hanks and her backers in the State show more Department believe that Bren has gone native and is no longer looking out for Mospheira's best interests. Hanks would oust Bren and become the new paidhi, except Tabini absolutely refuses to talk to her and would in fact have had her killed already if Bren hadn't specifically asked him not to. Although Bren is now getting much more information from Tabini and his bodyguards than he was in the first book, people are still keeping things from him, and he's almost completely blocked from communicating with the Foreign Office back in Mospheira.

Although he knows that he might be labeled a traitor, Bren offers to act as translator between the ship folk and the atevi. He has to convince the atevi that Mospheira won't automatically betray them in favor of the ship folk, clean up Hanks' political and linguistic messes, and figure out a solution to the ship problem that has the highest chance of being mutually beneficial to Mospheira and the atevi, all while simultaneously dealing with personal crises, terrifying gaps in his knowledge, and assassination attempts.

I read Foreigner a couple months ago and thought it was good, but frustrating. I absolutely loved Invader. The overall story seemed smoother, and Bren finally had the opportunity to show that he was extremely good at his job.

In the first book, Bren was an emotional mess stuck in a situation where his skills as paidhi were less immediately important than his bodyguards' ability to keep him safe. He received little-to-no useful information from anyone and basically had to operate blind. Since he was the POV character, readers had to operate blind too. It was uncomfortable, and I was so relieved to find that things were better in this book. Yes, Tabini's people censored what information they gave him, but they didn't keep him completely in the dark the way they did in the first book. His ability to communicate with Mospheira was hobbled, but he at least got enough information to speculate about what was going on.

I love characters who are really good at their jobs. In this book, Bren got to shine. I loved reading about him figuring out how to explain human thought processes in ways he figured the atevi would understand. I loved seeing the logic behind the arguments he used. I really loved Bren's first real-time translation between the ship folk and the atevi, and the mental and emotional shifts he had to go through in order to do that. Invader provided a bit more detail about how Ragi, the dominant atevi language worked – a combination of the usual vocabulary and grammar, plus a crap ton of mental math. Speaking of which, I was surprised that Bren didn't tell the ship folk that whichever person they assigned to learn Ragi should ideally be excellent at math.

Bren was at least as much of an emotional mess in this book as he was in the first one, but I enjoyed it more here – again, seeing him be good at his job helped a lot. The stuff with Barb was only a matter of time, anyway, and it was a relief to get it over and done with. Bren's emotional meltdowns were understandable considering the amount of stress he was under (and the amount of pain he was often in, plus his lack of sleep), and he very carefully made sure that those meltdowns only showed in front of the atevi he trusted most. And his "meltdowns" weren't actually all that bad compared to some of the things Hanks did. Refusing to pick up when Bren called her? Insisting on speaking Mosphei' so that she could snarl at Bren in front of an atevi audience? No wonder Tabini wanted to kill her.

Bren's desire to trust certain atevi led to additional problems, as he found himself fighting his instinct to assign human motivations to atevi behavior. He got along well with Tabini, Banichi, Jago, Tano and others, but him liking them and them seeming, from a human perspective, to like him didn't mean that they wouldn't one day do something that would seem to him like betrayal. He grappled with the possibility that Tabini and Ilisidi were using his human-ness against him, acting in ways they knew would cause him to drop his guard and trust them with more than he possibly should.

And then there was the stuff with Jago. That would be ethically and professionally problematic if he were a diplomat among humans, and certainly the people back in Mospheira wouldn't react well. Among atevi, he had no clue how any of it would be interpreted. I'm torn. On the one hand, I'm all “No, Bren, no!” On the other hand, I'm looking forward to the possibility of getting a better peek into atevi emotional lives. I want more than Bren's staff's reaction to him giving them gifts, Bren's unintentional popularity with atevi women, and even Tabini and Damiri's fascinating domestic squabble.

I suppose you could say this book was slow, but Bren's internal worrying, panic, and mental gymnastics made the pacing feel much faster than it was. At any rate, I enjoyed the story, the characters, the politics, the linguistic and cultural details, and the relationships, even when I had trouble following all the details. I'm glad I already have the second book, and I suspect I should put in an order for the next story arc soon.

Extras:

- Pronunciation guide (I'm resigned to forever mentally pronouncing Jago's name incorrectly - my brain seems to be unwilling to follow what the guide says is correct)

- Declension of a sample noun

- Glossary

(Original review, including read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

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Quote:

It hadn’t been a total mistake to agree to Tabini’s requests. Sometimes he’d gotten extraordinary results when Tabini pulled one of his must-talks.

Review:
I swear to everything, Bren has an damn anxiety disorder, and he's giving me one in the process. I've never met a book where the main character laid in bed for hours agonizing over everything he is doing, just like a normal person. This is despite extreme lack of sleep and other problems.

There are legitimate reasons Bren has to be stressed out. There is a spaceship overhead with reasons and factions no one knows. The atevi are blaming the humans on the island that the spaceship is there at all. His backup paidhi show more is on the mainland causing trouble and won't go away. And he just got out of surgery and is in a lot of pain and shouldn't be making big decisions but he has to anyway. His laying awake in anxiety makes absolute sense. So would I. And that is why Bren feels so real. Even though he is so much smarter and better a person than I am, I can connect with him as a character. And love him a bit, too.

Invader follows the events of Foreigner almost immediately. We learned towards the end of Foreigner that the ship that brought the Humans to the Atevi world is back. Now in this book, the Atevi are contacting them. The goal being to assert that this is the Atevi world, and their having control over what happens in their Heavens as well as their world is a fact not to be disputed. And also a large part of the book is to calm the rest of the Atevi who fear what this spaceship means.

All of these choices the Atevi have taken have been at the direction of Bren, who understands humans. And is now setting himself to potentially be considered a traitor to the human race because he is helping the atevi as a part of the treaty the humans and atevi signed. Which is especially in true because Deanna, the paidhi's successor should something happen to Bren, came to the mainland and she doesn't feel the same way about atevi as Bren does. She does not like that Bren is helping the Atevi at all, and is (trying to) report back to maligned forces in the Human government.

All of which is happening while Bren is still really hurt from the previous book. In the start of the book, Bren just woke up from surgery, and has to take off running. He is fueled by anxiety. He is depressed. He is lonely. And for a moment in Foreigner, he belonged and now that feeling of belonging has been lost and he wants it back.

What a powerful, amazing story. show less

Good Science fiction needs intelligent writing and enough serious ideas to make the reader think. C. J. Cherryh writes some of the best SF fiction. This Foreigner series is marvellous. Each novel adds to the complexity of the lives of the main characters and the seeds sown into the first book - Foreigner - are now growing into a more complex plot with a whole range of possibilities.

The series is not just a darn good story, it makes the reader think about culture and what it is, about how people can do damage with the best of intentions, and how best to actually cope with differences with more than just tolerance.

In the first novel we have a small group of around 4 million humans surviving on a large island on a planet which is not show more theirs. They landed from a crippled space craft and whilst relations were good with the steam age native population things soon fell apart because the humans did not understand the atevi and caused tremendous political and social damage. After the dreadful war an interpreter from the human side was to live in the atevi capital as a government translator. His job was to make a dictionary, prevent misunderstanding, and slowly, carefully allow the atevi technology which did not destroy the very different social structure

With a new and young aiji (King) and a new and young interpreter, Bren, getting on well all hell breaks loose because that first spaceship which had been absent for 200 years returned. A treaty is finally made and two humans from the ship are to be sent to the planet one, to the humans and one to the atevi. However the conservative humans want to join the spaceship people and exclude the atevi and the conservative atevi want to get rid of Bren and all humans. It looks like a terrible mess despite the machinations of the aiji and Bren is forced to communicate directly with the ship on behalf of the atevi which means he is a traitor to the humans in their eyes. Fortunately the ship humans realise the atevi are worth dealing with and send down Jason and Yolanda. Despite political upheavals among the humans and among the atevi, Bren and the aiji win out.

Well written and tightly and so cleverly plotted, it is a novel to make the reader think about tolerance, being different and different cultures. Well worth reading even by non-SF fans. show less

This sequel to Foreigner picks up almost exactly where the first volume left off. After surgery in a Mospherian hospital (for injuries received in the first book), Bren Cameron is immediately recalled to Shejidan where the return of the starship Phoenix is causing turmoil in Atevi politics. During his absence, Bren's understudy Deanna Hanks was sent to Shejidan and has stirred up undesirable elements in the opposition by mentioning restricted subjects, but now she refuses to go home. She believes that Bren is committing treason by advancing Atevi interests ahead of Mospherian ones in his communication with the ship.

Meanwhile, Bren struggles unendingly with his human need to like his Atevi companions, regardless of their inability to show more like him back, or to even understand the concept. The Atevi emotion of man'chi is similarly opaque to Bren, though he constantly tries to grasp it and often ends up embarrassing himself or other people. On the other hand, Bren tangles himself in needing other humans as well, and then realizes he doesn't like those people even as much as he likes his Atevi staff.

In this volume, we see Bren become more attached and more comfortable with Banichi and Jago, who also seem to become more comfortable with him. The paidhi cannot remain a semi-neutral translator and negotiator much longer, as he strongly wants to preserve Atevi culture and history, even at the expense of human development. Already he has become more politically important than any previous paidhi, a fact which makes him a target for assassination. show less

This is the second book in Cherryh's Foreigner series, about an alien species and a lost colony of humans sharing a planet.

I enjoyed this more than the first one. It's still very slow-paced, but you expect less non-stop action and more introspection and in-depth analyses of political situations from Cherryh, anyway. And at least it does feel like that situation is truly developing now, in some complicated and interesting ways. Both the main character and the aliens he's interacting with are starting to feel a lot more fleshed out, too. Which is particularly good to see with the aliens. Their culture is interesting, but they seemed a lot less alien than Cherryh kept trying to insist they were in the first book. In many ways, they still show more do, but some of the additional glimpses we're getting of their civilization and thought patterns here are helping to offset that.

I think I need a little bit of a break from this series now -- it really did take me a long time to get through this one -- but I am very interested to come back and see what's going to happen next. show less

A first class sequel to Foreigner, Invader continues to explore how cultural differences affects those who spend their life in a culture other than their native.

Cherryh displays a mastery of political intrigue and the pacing of the story virtually make the pages turn by themselves. Or so it feels when I suddenly look at the bedside watch and realizes it's 1 AM and tomorrow's a workday!

The characters all got more flesh on their bones and the story is tight and well written, well paced.

(...and after reading reading_fox's review I have to add that yes, the pizza incident is hilarious AND illustrative!)