Precursor (Foreigner 4)

by C. J. Cherryh

Hardcover, 1999

Status

Available

Publication

DAW Hardcover (1999), 438 pages

Description

On a planet inhabited by humans and aliens, preparations are underway to resist an invasion from outside. The hero is diplomat Bren Cameron, whose skills as a translator have maintained harmony between humans and aliens.

User reviews

LibraryThing member reading_fox
Time has passed, the shuttle built, the human government changed. Suddenly the ship calls its representatives back. Tabeni resonds with a lords gesture and on the return visit Brem, his security and the islanders are sent to the space station - with the Guild unaware and unhappy. Bren is once again
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required to politic agreements between cultures that, superficially similar, vary widely in interpretations of common ground.
Parties on the ship suddenly disagree with "aliens" in orbit and Bren must fight to ensure that aveti get a fair deal and peace.

Still written in Cherryh's gripping strict third person, the differences in human expectations are clearly marked and make a fascinating read.

After re-read.
Another one of the best in the series. Bren is fully atevi now, and although he tries to maintain ties to his relations it isn't easy. Neither is it easy to imagine that the ship humans could be more different than the atevi are compared with the Islanders, and suspicians of old mindsets still run deep in all parties.

Intensly gripping throughout, the ending is yet another of Cherryh's breakneck rushes. It does feel somewhat contrived, but is the only co-incidence used as a plot device.
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LibraryThing member johncstark
If you've followed the series so far then this book will not disappoint. The pace of the action is quick and getting caught up in the story is effortless.
LibraryThing member TadAD
The second trilogy within the longer series continues the over-arching story of the entire series with the action moving out to space. While I enjoyed the setting of the atevi culture of the first three books a bit better, the series is still going strong.
LibraryThing member zette
Precursor (Foreigner 4) by C. J. Cherryh (ISBN 0886778360)

Three years have passed since we left Bren Cameron in the dangerous work of translator between the Atevi and the humans who are trapped on their world. Or maybe not as trapped as they had been, since the human ship has returned to the
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abandoned space station hanging over their heads. The fact that the humans have a deep seeded, cultural distrust of the Phoenix ship crew only complicates the problem since they don't trust the Atevi, either.

And the ship hasn't returned with good news. There is another species in space, and they are not at all friendly. They may be heading this way.

In those three years, the Atevi have done the practically impossible. They've built a shuttle and they've made some practice runs to the station. Everything is going smoothly.

So why has the leader of the Atevi suddenly ordered Bren to go to the station? And why is it at this crucial moment that his human family seems to be complicating the situation with their own problems?

But that's nothing compared to the trouble he's about to have with the ship's captains who suddenly find they have an Atevi presence on the station.

Book 4 of the Foreigner sequence starts fast and never slows down. Bren and his Atevi companions have their hands full with dangers on every side and little cooperation from anyone. They're only hope for back up is weeks away with the return of the shuttle. There's no easy answer on whom to trust among the humans, and, as always, no easy answer for Bren.

For those who have read all the books up to this point, the understanding of the Atevi and their culture starts to make it easier to predict some of their moves and to understand what will happen in some instances -- but even for Bren, there are occasional surprises.

This was a fun, fast book to read. The sense of things changing in the world, of the dangers lurking not only in space but close to home, makes Precursor a great lead into even more trouble to come!
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LibraryThing member bragan
This is book four in Cherryh's Foreigner series, set three years after the conclusion of the original trilogy. Humans and the alien atevi -- or, more accurately, atevi and the alien humans -- have been coexisting on the atevi's homeworld for a couple of centuries, but now the balance has been
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disturbed by a new arrival. Bren Cameron, our protagonist from the first thee books, is sent to do some negotiating, and things seem to be going very well... until, of course, they're suddenly not. And, meanwhile, his family just keeps having personal crises he can't help with.

Like most of Cherryh's stuff, this is dense with lots of analyses of the political and security situations, and it's very slow-moving. (Although, in this case, I think it also wraps things up a little too suddenly at the end.) But, as often manages to be the case with Cherryh, while this seemed like it should be just plain tedious, it nevertheless held my attention and my interest. In fact, I think I found it the fastest-reading of the series so far.

There are a lot more books in this series, and I find I'm looking forward to seeing how this world of hers develops. But not just yet; even when I'm enjoying her writing, there's a limit to how much of it my brain can handle all at once.
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LibraryThing member LisCarey
This is the fourth book in the "Foreigner" series, picking up three years after the end of Inheritor. Bren Cameron has settled into his new position as a member of the aiji's government and not a representative of the human government of Mospheira; Jason Graham has become fluent in Ragi and
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reasonably comfortable, both with the atevi and with being on a planet. Bren's family is able to visit him at his private estate on the mainland.

This is way too comfortable for anyone to be in a Cherryh novel, so of course things start changing on the first page--before the first page, in fact, as Cherryh dumps us into the middle of Things Changing Unpleasantly. The captains of Phoenix, having recalled their paidhi (translator/diplomat) from Mospheira on the last shuttle trip, are now recalling Jason Graham from the atevi mainland, too. Tabini, the aiji of the Western Association, has decided to respond by granting immediately the request of the Mospheira government to send a delegation up on the shuttle (the Mospheirans had expected that this would take a year or so to approve), and to send Bren up as well.

Bren is informed of this the day he returns from a rather trying visit to Mospheira, where his family is as clueless and difficult as always.

In short order, Bren and his household are on the long-abandoned and only partially restored space station, with their only potential allies the Mospheiran delegation, the head of which is a member of the Heritage Party, the political party which opposes cooperation with the atevi. Jason and the other Pilots' Guild translator, Yolanda Mercheson, are incommunicado, "in conference with the captains" whenever Bren tries to reach either of them. A promising start to the negotiations with the senior captain, Ramirez, is followed by confusion, delay, and a battle of wits in which the captains attempt to completely isolate Bren, and Bren and his household resist this, attempting to keep contact with the atevi shuttle crew and build an alliance with the Mospheirans, as well as make contacts among the Phoenix crew. As might be expected with Cherryh, things get really bad before they get better. Precursor doesn't stand alone; you really do need to have read earlier books in the series to understand the pre-existing relationships and political forces, but as a part of the series, this is a very strong book.
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LibraryThing member fuzzi
Bren Cameron finds himself in a life-threatening situation aboard a derelict space station, trying to negotiate with irrational humans who seem determined to provoke another war with the Atevi. Exciting, mentally stimulating, great characters...typical Cherryh!

I loved the first three books in the
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Foreigner series but stopped reading them due to real life issues. Twenty three years later I picked up where I left off, and thoroughly enjoyed this installment.
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LibraryThing member AnnieMod
Three years after the end of the previous book, the atevi had built their shuttle and have somewhat regular flights to the space station. Bren had officially become part of Tabini's court - he is more an atevi these days than human (despite his biology) although he is still the translator (the
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padhi) between the two cultures and he is still paid by the human side. So here he is, at the start of the novel, trying to get back to the continent after a trip home. Before long, he is bound for the space station - where things go wrong exactly at the worst time and it looks like the previous 3 years of cooperation may not be enough to help. And Bren is back to trying to translate cultures and thoughts - this time three-way - the humans on the ground, the atevi and the humans of the ship. Because when languages and the meaning of words come into play, culture and thought and biology matter.

The novel is the start of the second trilogy of the much longer series so as with the very first novel of the series, it is just the start of a story. It takes its time to get moving - we spend a lot of time in Bren's head while he is trying to puzzle out what is going on. Except that even in these moments, things move - the series was never about the big battles (and smaller skirmishes) - they are the supporting action of a story about cultures and meeting the unknown.

It took me while to warm up to this novel - it is different from the first 3 (getting Bren where he is was partially the point of the first 3 and I enjoyed the journey). It is important to remember that we get only Bren's story - we know what he knows and he can be an unreliable narrator occasionally. So some of the weirder moments (he and Jesse need these last few hours to talk after all that time?) make sense if you are Bren - the man who learned to think against his own biology and senses. By the end of it though, I was back in love with the series - in some ways this novel is better than the first 3 exactly because it has everything already established so it can tell a story. And even when you know what is coming (because by now we know that there will be surprises and Tabini does not have that many reliable people to send when he needs something), it still rings true when Bren is surprised (although he is getting better at anticipating Tabini's and Ilisidi's actions).

I am not entirely sure what the novel is setting up for (and I do not want to look up the summaries of the next novels yet). The aliens (the ones that attacked the other station) will need to come into play sooner or later and the way this trilogy is shaping, it probably will at least start in it. So onto the next novel.
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Language

Original language

English

Barcode

9150
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