If there was ever a Sci-fi series that itched the linguist nerd part of my brain and had a great plot and characters, it’s the Foreigner series by C. J. Cherryh. The series follows the main character, Bren Cameron, who serves as the only human liaison to the Atevi, an alien peoples who are native to the planet the humans were stranded on. The Atevi have a very particular number and linguistic system built into their language and a wrong word or ‘infelicitious’ number can mean anything from disrespect to a death sentence.
Six months have passed since the reappearance of the starship Phoenix - the same ship which brought humans to the world of alien atevi nearly two hundred years ago, leaving a small and vulnerable colony to struggle for survival in a hostile environment. During these six months, the alien atevi have striven to reconfigure their fledgling space program in a breakneck bid to take their place in the heavens alongside humans. But the return of the Phoenix has added a frighteningly powerful third party to an already volatile situation, polarizing political factions in both human and atevi societies, and making the possibility of all-out planetary war an even more likely threat. On the atevi mainland, human ambassador Bren Cameron, in a desperate attempt to maintain the peace, has risked alienation from his own people by communicating with the staff of the Phoenix as spokesman for the atevi, and has arranged for one human representative from the Phoenix to take up residence with him in his apartments, and for another to be stationed on Mosphiera, humanity's island enclave. Now, Bren has the difficult task of indoctrinating Jason Graham, a young man who has never before set foot on a planet, in the intricate, delicate, and potentially lethal maneuverings of the human-atevi interface. And this at a time when, thanks to the assassination of an atevi lord who had been one of Bren's primary adversaries, and the near-collision of Bren's personal plane with a jet manned by an unknown pilot, the relationship between atevi factions is becoming more strained by the minute.
Summary from Goodreads
My Review
Inheritor is the third in the series, the last of the first trilogy. By now, I have become familiar with the introspective style of the plot, bookended by intense action sequences and almost more intense conversational pitfalls.
Bren remains one of my favorite characters in Sci-fi. Cherryh does an amazing job of describing a human whose entire life is inherently not human, dedicated to keeping peace with the Atevi while forgoing many natural human interactions.
Her description of the Atevi and the way she builds their society and individual characters should be taught as a master class in how to write aliens. They are alien in the truest sense of the word, and some of the many inner conflicts that Bren experiences are between his humanity and the alien world he lives in.
The Atevi themselves are amazing characters. Some of my favorites are Banichi, who has a sly sense of humor and is a general badass; Ilisidi, an elderly Atevi who regularly scares much younger Atevi out of her path; Jago, also a badass, and interested in Bren; Tabini, aiji (supreme leader) who is brilliant at navigating the treacherous political waters between the Atevi and the humans of Mospheira.
Inheritor has all of my favorite hallmarks (so far) of this series: intense action, beautiful prose, fascinating linguistic gymnastics courtesy of Bren and the Atevi, and a rising sense of tension that almost takes you by surprise due to how subtle Cherryh builds it.
In most cases, I dislike the term ‘cerebral sci-fi’, but in this case the phrase perfectly describes the type of Sci-fi you’ll find in the Foreigner series without undervalueing other types of Sci-fi.