Review: Destroyer, by C.J. Cherryh
Jul. 1st, 2005 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalSummary: Bren Cameron, paidhi to the Atevi, who's world castaway humans intruded upon centuries ago, returns home after two years in space with his companions, after successfully rescuing another group of standed humans. Only to find his patron, the Atevi leader that pushed his people into LEO and beyond to claim the human space station that orbited above them, had suffered a coup eight months previously by more conservative factions of the local alliance's government, and is nowhere to be found and possibly dead.
Oh, and it's basically all Bren's fault.
C.J. Cherryh is one of my favorite authors after Lois McMaster-Bujold, which I find mildly odd given the disconnect of their styles. If there's a fundamental difference between them, it's that in Lois' stories you can count on the people (aside from villians and faceless guards) to be fundamentally in agreement with the hero's goals. There are exceptions, like Ista's vexing keepers at the beginning of Paladin of Souls, but for the most part if Miles (or Caz) believes a course of action is needed, it won't be long before everyone around him agrees and is slowly drawn into Our Hero's orbit.
Not so in Cherryh's Foreigner series, where Bren is constantly trying to balance the demands of everyone around him, antagonists, patron, irritating relatives, flinty old grandmothers, and loyal bodyguards & retainers, whose goals are rarely completely congruent with his own, and whom Bren sometimes can barely understand given the truely alien mindset of the Atevi. Of course he's a diplomat, so finding his way through these social-political mindfields is his job, and Cherryh makes it as much a challenge as any of Miles' Dendarii raids.
And this time he's got a doozy of a problem. But rest assured it is solved in the usual manner. For Notes will be written, tea will be drunk in mass quantities, and there will be much, much fussing by Bren's miraculously capable staff, who have joined their man'chi (roughly: Loyalty & honor, but not quite) with his, and will make sure that the paidhi will appear in public wearing clean and pressed lace at his cuffs, or die trying.
It's marvelous stuff, with elements of a political thriller, historical Japan, and Jane Austen all thrown into the blender. The workings of the Atevi brain continue to fascinate, even more so now that Bren has matured and found a place in the Atevi culture, despite the distance that grows between him and humanity. Better still, certain characters have also matured (cough, Barb, cough, cough) to the point that they no longer make the reader's teeth grate.
Oh, and if you think everythign is going to be hunky dory at the end of things... Well, suffice it to say Bren's job is only starting. Because if I'm reading it right, by the end of the next book all of the groundside politics will be solved, and the stuff on the station will be just about ready to explode.
Oh, and it's basically all Bren's fault.
C.J. Cherryh is one of my favorite authors after Lois McMaster-Bujold, which I find mildly odd given the disconnect of their styles. If there's a fundamental difference between them, it's that in Lois' stories you can count on the people (aside from villians and faceless guards) to be fundamentally in agreement with the hero's goals. There are exceptions, like Ista's vexing keepers at the beginning of Paladin of Souls, but for the most part if Miles (or Caz) believes a course of action is needed, it won't be long before everyone around him agrees and is slowly drawn into Our Hero's orbit.
Not so in Cherryh's Foreigner series, where Bren is constantly trying to balance the demands of everyone around him, antagonists, patron, irritating relatives, flinty old grandmothers, and loyal bodyguards & retainers, whose goals are rarely completely congruent with his own, and whom Bren sometimes can barely understand given the truely alien mindset of the Atevi. Of course he's a diplomat, so finding his way through these social-political mindfields is his job, and Cherryh makes it as much a challenge as any of Miles' Dendarii raids.
And this time he's got a doozy of a problem. But rest assured it is solved in the usual manner. For Notes will be written, tea will be drunk in mass quantities, and there will be much, much fussing by Bren's miraculously capable staff, who have joined their man'chi (roughly: Loyalty & honor, but not quite) with his, and will make sure that the paidhi will appear in public wearing clean and pressed lace at his cuffs, or die trying.
It's marvelous stuff, with elements of a political thriller, historical Japan, and Jane Austen all thrown into the blender. The workings of the Atevi brain continue to fascinate, even more so now that Bren has matured and found a place in the Atevi culture, despite the distance that grows between him and humanity. Better still, certain characters have also matured (cough, Barb, cough, cough) to the point that they no longer make the reader's teeth grate.
Oh, and if you think everythign is going to be hunky dory at the end of things... Well, suffice it to say Bren's job is only starting. Because if I'm reading it right, by the end of the next book all of the groundside politics will be solved, and the stuff on the station will be just about ready to explode.
