C.J. Cherryh continues the drama of first (accidental) contact begun
with Foreigner in Invader. Exceptional for
its exploration of what it means to be human, the continuing story of
the young paidhi Bren Cameron reads smoothly and compellingly.
Assigned to serve as ambassador between the native atevi and
the tiny human colony on the island of Mospheira, Bren is thrust from
a foreshortened recovery following an assasination attempt into an
increasingly tense state of affairs between Mospheirans and the atevi.
The starship Phoenix, the same one that brought humans to this
unknown sector of space with one ill-executed jump through hyperspace,
has suddenly reappeared in the sky above the planet, and the hard-won
peace the atevi and Mospheirans have wrought is suddenly in
gravest jeopardy.
It has been one hundred seventy-eight years since the Phoenix
left its orbit around the planet, leaving the fledgling colony to fend
for itself on a world apparently amenable to human presence. But as
the humans discovered in the process of changing the shape of the land to
suit their needs, the atevi have an entirely different worldview shaped
by their alien biology, and a great war between the interlopers
and the natives nearly wiped out the incipient human population. In the
years since, the humans (now confined to Mospheira) and atevi have worked
out a strict protocol for coexisting. A single human translator, known
as the "paidhi," is allowed on the mainland at a time. The humans mete
out carefully controlled doses of technological information to the atevi
in return for continuing safety on Mospheira.
The unexpected return of the Phoenix throws the established
but ever tenuous detante between Mospheira and the mainland out
the window. Conservative elements among the atevi believe the ship's
return is welcomed by Mospheira, and their not altogether groundless fears
make Bren Cameron's job exponentially more complex. Compounding the
paidhi's difficulties is the presence of his successor, Deanna Hanks,
in Shejidan. Upon his return to the atevi capital, Hanks should, by the
rules, return herself to Mospheira. But the human State Department
remains silent, issuing no recall order for either Hanks or Bren, and
communicating no reply to Bren's inquiries. The atevi leadership is
offended and concerned by Mospheira's apparent snub of agreed-upon
protocol concerning human presence on the mainland, especially in the
face of the disruptive reappearance of the Phoenix. The aiji Tabini,
the atevi equivalent of a president, intending to keep Bren safe, houses
Bren in the residence of the Atigeini family. Tabini's lover is Atigeini,
but the rest of her family is staunchly conservative and opposed to
Tabini as aiji. Bren Cameron's presence in their household is certain
to provoke the Atigeini and other conservative atevi factions.
The atevi mindset, so utterly foreign to human thinking, makes the
atevi language, thick as it is with numerological conjugations and
connotations, nearly impossible for most humans to comprehend. Deanna
Hanks is a child of a politically high-ranking human family, and won
her position as successor-paidhi through narrow-interest support in the
upper ranks of the State Department. Her credentials, suspect as they
are, lie entirely in the realm of economics; her scores in culture and
psychology have been consistently low. Considering her short temper and general
lack of subtlety, Bren feels Deanna to be a poor choice to succeed him
on the mainland. The continuing lack of communication from Mospheira
makes her presence in Shejidan an increasingly dangerous one; she has
begun making overtures to the very factions who would see Tabini brought
down. The Phoenix threatens the stability of the entire world
with all the implications of its unknown plans.
While Bren struggles to keep relations stable between Mospheira and the
atevi with whom he has spent his time almost exclusively for several
years, he wrestles too with his own eroding relationships with his
family and lover on the island. An erotic overture by one of his atevi
security nearly sends him over an edge that may spell the end of his
ability to be human, yet would still not allow him to truly know
the mind of the atevi. The intractability of his human superiors and
the suspicions of the mathematically precise yet dangerously superstitious
atevi leadership may be more than Bren can overcome to maintain the
precarious balance on the planet that is the only home he has ever known.
C.J. Cherryh is brilliant again as she tells the tale of a single man
bearing the responsibility for the future of an entire world. As Bren
tries to rein in the status quo from advancing more than the necessary
few inches at a time, he bears more importantly the heavy load of developing
a truer self-knowledge of who he is and where he belongs. Invader
succeeds on all levels, bringing the often invisible twin tensions of
intercultural communication and painful self-examination to a place where
they can be seen and mulled over.