Foreigner is character-driven science fiction at its best. Cherryh’s adroit limited third-person narration let us follow Bren’s conflicted emotions and calculations as he works to understand what it will take to survive.

Even in this first novel, there is already sexual tension between Bren and one of the bodyguards. Bren’s two assassin bodyguards are his closest companions. His powerful and dangerous grandmother does more than anyone to educate Bren into the Atevi rituals and values. Tabini, who would be the head of state if the Atevi had such things as states, is interested in using his connection with the human colony to increase Atevi power and secure his position against his Atevi rivals. Justice is dispensed by a guild of assassins that act has bodyguards for the rich and powerful. Atevi society is a patchwork of loose associations with conflicting clan loyalties. They look to numerology to evaluate every new idea and have no concept of emotions like love and friendship. The Atevi are a conservative, xenophobic society that is just beginning to industrialize. His efforts to balance his duty and connection with his human family and colleagues as he begins to think almost like an Atevi are the core of the series. He finds that he cannot learn the language without partially assimilating into Atevi culture. Bren is primarily a linguist charged with learning to communicate efficiently with the Atevi. Most of Foreigner follows protagonist Bren Cameron and his relationship with the Atevi family, with whom humans have established political relations. This background story, told in the first fifteen percent of the novel, grounds the political drama developed in the next several trilogies in the series. When the starship returns two-hundred years later, the fragile détente is endangered. But the Atevi confine the colonists to one island and negotiate with them for the technology they want, which is not always the technology the humans want to give them. Their goal is to plant a colony on the planet and use the Atevi, its native humanoid species, to create the technological base they need. When their undermanned starship abandons the station built in orbit around the only habitable planet within reach, the station cannot maintain its population. Their existence on land and in space is marginal and fraught with political division.

First, Cherryh is careful to establish that human scientific superiority does not mean that they can implement all they know. Cherryh’s long-running Foreigner series, I was impressed by how many clues we get to themes and plot elements that are developed much later in the series.

Cj cherryh foreigner books in order