Description:

It has been two years since the starship Phoenix left Alpha Station on a rescue mission to a faraway sector of space where over four thousand human spacers were under attack by a hostile alien race. Now, exhausted from their journey, with resources strained by four thousand extra mouths to feed, the crew of the Phoenix yearns for home. But when the ship makes the final jump into atevi space, things do not seem right. And when they make contact with Alpha, they learn the worst - that supplies to the station have been cut off; that civil war has broken out on the atevi mainland; that the powerful Western Association has been overthrown; and that Tabiniaiji, Bren Cameron's primary supporter and Ilisidi's grandson and ally, is missing and may be dead. With no one left to lead the Western Association, Ilisidi and Bren know that the survival of their allies lies in their hands. And with the atevi world at war, the only safe landing strip lies on the human colony at Mosphiera. Althought there are many dangers inherent in bringing a powerful atevi leader such as Ilisidi onto human lands, Bren realizes they have no choice but to do so. But even if they survive their landing, will Bren and Ilisidi together prove strong enough to muster the remaining shards of the Western Association and regain control of their planet?

From Publishers Weekly

In this solid if slow-moving addition to Cherryh's much-praised Foreigner series (_Invader_, etc.), Bren Cameron and his atevi allies finally return to their home world, where atevi natives and human colonists live in an uneasy truce. Their desperate, two-year mission has been a success; they've evacuated the humans stranded on distant Reunion Station and made tentative peace with the kyo, an enigmatic and heretofore hostile alien race. Bren soon discovers, however, that his troubles are far from over. His employer, Tabini, the most powerful atevi ruler on the planet, has been deposed and may well be dead. Along with Tabini's bumptious young heir, Cajeiri, and the ruler's highly competent but aging grandmother, Ilisidi, Bren must make a dangerous shuttle landing and then travel cross-country through hostile territory in search of his employer, who is the only leader on the planet, human or atevi, with the foresight and presence of mind to deal with the impending arrival of the kyo. Cherryh's Foreigner books make up one of the finest on-going series in the genre. This volume, the first in a new trilogy, is hampered by the need to clarify what is now a considerable back story, but it features a healthy dose of the author's trademark well-developed characters, fine style and intense psychological realism. Cherryh's many readers should snap this one up.
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From

Human diplomat Bren Cameron is about to arrive at Mospheira, the homeworld of the atevi, after a two-year voyage that has nearly exhausted his ship's supplies and almost exhausted the patience of the atevi traveling with him. The most important of those is eight-year-old Cajeiri, heir to one of the major political units (so called for want of a more precise term), who is now sufficiently acculturated to human standards of behavior that he wants a birthday party. This is only the first conundrum pitched at Bren; upon arrival, he finds that Mospheira is on the brink of war due to breakdowns in the complex system of rivalries and affiliations among what can loosely be called clans. Bren is probably the only human who adequately understands the intricacies of atevi culture, but he is a long way from human support, which wouldn't be expedient, anyway, though the consequences of atevi social breakdown would be grisly for humans, too. It doesn't happen, but expect further crises in the trilogy Destroyer launches. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

The first book in the new Foreigner trilogy from the Hugo Award-winning author

C.J. Cherryh, one of the most prolific and acclaimed science fiction writers in the world, now delivers the seventh book in her Foreigner series and the first book in the new Foreigner trilogy-the epic tale of the survivors of a lost spacecraft who crash-land on a planet inhabited by a hostile, sentient race. From its beginnings as a human-alien story of first contact, the Foreigner series has become a true science fiction odyssey.