Several months ago C.J. Cherryh published the first book in her sixth trilogy of the Foreigner Sequence, and I’m very glad I read it.
However.
I’ve always said that the Foreigner books are difficult to recommend, because they take so much work to read. I enjoy catching up with the characters I’ve known for so long, watching their interactions, and seeing where the story takes them. But I don’t know how interested you’d be if you jumped in on Tracker, the sixteenth book. Even if you decided to skip fifteen books, this book is still a lot of work to read.
I think it’s worth it, but I’ve read so many it’d be hard to stop now. (There’s a poll at the end of the review, I’m curious what everybody else thinks.)
Bren Cameron, the human paidhi of this world, operates as the ambassador and translator between the human island and the atevi mainland. At least, that used to be his job. If we’re being honest, he went native a long time ago, and primarily works for the atevi, but he still cares about the humans, and really does try to do what’s fair for everyone.
Events in the past few years have made that difficult, what with a spaceship full of humans appearing in the heavens, an entire space station of five thousand humans rescued and suddenly brought back to the planet, and a completely new alien race somewhere out there in space that they’ve only met once.
And a fourth species they’ve gotten word of that everyone hopes stays very, very far away.
And here was my big problem with the current book; it was at least two-thirds exposition.
I’m not saying that was completely unexpected; every book in the series has a summary that Cherryh carefully works into the story, to catch the reader up on what’s come before. And when beginning a whole new trilogy, it’s really important to make sure a new reader knows the history.
But it’s daunting, even to someone who’s read every book. It is a ton of information, and it goes on forever. The story just crawls forward. It’s broken up by a clever bit of dialog here and there, but most of it is pages and pages of Bren’s (and sometimes Cajeiri’s) internal monologue, summing up the story.
I know a writer has to do what they can to pull new readers into the story, because it’s tough to expect someone to go back fifteen books before starting the current one. And if you’re speaking to a new reader, you don’t want them to be lost.
But I think the time may have come for Cherryh to change tactics, and I don’t know how it would be done. I can’t imagine how daunting it must be, taking fifteen books worth of history and compressing it down to a hundred pages of exposition. But at this point I don’t know how helpful all that exposition really is to a new reader; I’ve read at least one comment on goodreads.com from a reader who read Tracker without reading any of the previous books, and they were completely lost. I don’t think the recaps are helpful, and I’m concerned she’s started to alienate existing followers of the story.
I don’t have a suggestion. I just have some vague idea of her going “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” and just telling the current story without any history; the existing readers will get it and the new readers will catch up.
But I’m biased, because I’m an existing reader, and I’ve been so tempted lately when Bren starts one of his internal monologues to just skim forward and find a conversation, thinking “maybe Cajeiri’s getting into trouble somewhere…”
Because once the story starts to move forward, it really moves. In the space of a hundred pages Bren is on the planet deciding to visit his brother, and then he’s whisked up to the space station to deal with a threat, and goes toe to toe with a stationmaster who has clearly lost his mind, and hopes his (very loyal and extremely frightening) bodyguard doesn’t decide to kill someone, all while trying to figure out how to talk to a dangerous new alien race when the only thing they’ve translated in their language is a handful of nouns. It was fun, exciting, satisfying, and absolutely makes me want to read more.
And it was the last third of the book and was over in no time at all.
Also, as long as I’m being brutally honest: I was really disappointed in the cover. Apologies to Todd Lockwood; I have no skill in painting and would never be able to create art half as well as he does. The texture and details in every single element of background and clothing are staggeringly good. (Seriously, look at the chairs.) But Bren looks terrible, and someone looking vaguely overworked with a cup of tea halfway to his mouth is not the most inspiring way to depict an adventure.
I love these books, and I don’t want to stop reading them. I’m hoping that this, the first book in the newest trilogy, was just intended to be one big setup, and will get all the rehashing out of the way so the next books can move faster.
Because I have to be honest: lately I’ve started reading these books with gritted teeth, hoping that Bren gets thrown into the middle of a firefight before he has a chance to sit down someplace quiet and reminisce to himself about the last five trilogies.
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