Foreigner (Foreigner #1) by C.J. Cherryh

  

 My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Sci-fi
Content: Strong language

 

The first book in C.J.Cherryh's eponymous series, Foreigner begins an epic tale of the survivors of a lost spacecraft who crash-land on a planet inhabited by a hostile, sentient alien race. From its beginnings as a human-alien story of first contact, the Foreigner series has become a true science fiction odyssey, following a civilization from the age of steam through early space flight to confrontations with other alien species in distant sectors of space. It is the masterwork of a truly remarkable author.

 

I was interested in this right from the start, except it was a false start. In all there are two false starts to this book. During the second prologue, I was really into the story about the first contact and then the book switched gears and threw us forward 200 years into the future. I was really wanting to know what happened next with the first contact part of the story, but alas we never get that. 

That being said, once I got into the main part of the book I did end up enjoying the story. It wasn't a book I loved, and I didn't enjoy it as much as Down Below Station or it's two sequels (Merchanter's Luck, and Rim Runners). In fact, I would say the two prologues, or false starts as I've called them are more similar to those books. This book is almost all politics and hardly any action. This results in the story being very slow and it does drag some scenes out for way too long. Normally that wouldn't work for me, but despite the slowness of the story, I did somehow enjoy this. I think there's just something about C.J. Cherryh's writing style that works for me. Plus, I got invested in Bren as a character and I wanted to know what this is all leading up to. 

I do plan on reading the next book because this one felt like the beginning to something greater. However, if the second book is the same pace as this one, and is still mostly all politics, I may not continue on with the series. It will have to be compelling enough for me to continue. We shall see.