Not as strong as the first two books, mainly because of it's pacing. It starts slowly and wanders along for a long time, then late in the book starts moving. It's pretty much over when it whips through a climax and resolution in a startlingly short number of pages. To boot, the authour seems to pull a few rabbits out of hats to get it to all hang together.

The character development is quite enjoyable, and the expanded background welcome.

Enjoyable, just not as stand out as the start of the series. ( )

3.5-ish.

I'm glad that some of my complaints during the book were addressed (namely Bren being pretty hypocritical with Jase, and Jase's weird mood swings), but I've detected a pattern in the books that I'm not sure I want to continue with. The trips through forests with Ilsidi are fine and all, but...surely there's a different way to resolve each book. Things came to a head too quickly, I really wanted to explore those repercussions more.

Also, and always: needs more Tabini.

The party scene was pretty much the best in the book. More of the political intrigue stuff where people talk to each other, and Bren isn't just wandering in his own head! ( )

Finishing the first trilogy inside of the much longer series, Inheritor picks up 6 months after [Invader] finished. The human ship is now part of the normal life of everyone, the second interpreter is steadily learning the language and Bren is back to trying to do his job. Except nothing is the same really - Mospheira don't even talk to him and Deanna Hanks is up to no good again.

The relative peace does not last long and Bren (now with Jason) is thrown back in the middle of the machinations of Hanks and her supporters. Ilisidi gets to pull one of her tricks again, we get to see even more of atevi society, a love affair or three finally get to happen and the reason for the ship being back after 200 years is finally revealed (thus setting the stage for the next novels).

As usual with this series, it took me awhile to get into the style - Bren's constant doubt in anything that happens and his own actions can be annoying. On the other hand, he is a translator and the world literally depends on his work - one wrong word and things can crash down - just see what happened when Hanks mentioned FTL. Making a translator the main character and giving us the story from his viewpoint makes this series a bit different. And we are not talking about translations between languages and cultures only but between species - different brain wiring makes it impossible to find commonalities (or makes it very hard anyway). And looking at the society from outside while becoming part of it (in some ways) is going to always be interesting.

Cherryh specializes in writing humans as the outsiders - her Chanur and Mri series did the same. But this one is somewhat different - in both Chanur and Mri, there is only one human (and when others appear, they are there just marginally), here Bren is alone in the atevi world but the rest of humanity is still there (and getting everyone in trouble). The whole idea is as much dealing with a different culture as it is smoothing the way for the two cultures to meet. Plus he had been trained for that (unlike the Chanur and Mri cases).

I also think that with getting more familiar with the atevi helps the series - the first book was a hard read - worth it but still hard one. This books feels a lot lighter in some ways - mainly because things finally make sense. I almost want to go back and reread the first book now - but then I have a lot more left. But I can see myself returning.

Don't even try to read this novel on its own - it is very much a part of its series and even though a lot of the background is repeated, it won't work if you never read the previous 2 novels. On the other hand, if you are up for an adventure, you cannot really go wrong with this series (unless you bounce off the style anyway). ( )

This book has all same complaints I had for the first two books: it's incredibly slow-paced; the sentences are long and awkward; whole chapters are spent on Bren thinking and yet the main conflicts are rushed and not really explained.

But I actually did enjoy it, even though it took me forever to finish. I'm just captivated by the atevi and love the whole concept that species differences aren't easily overcome, that you could spend a lifetime trying to understand aliens and still find you didn't really get them. And it's very atmospheric. I put it down (after about a month working on it) feeling inspired. And that made it worth the effort of getting through it. ( )

I'm entranced (again) by reading this series straight through. I was always a big fanboy when they first came out and it was by this book that I devoted myself, mind and soul, to the collecting of every hardcover edition.

Yeah, I still think it's that good.

The high expectations between Jase and Bren, now that Jase has made it, barely, to the mainland after his drop from space, and now he's basically regretting everything that brought him to the Atevi. Bren's not having the time of his life, either, because the Human's island had all but written him off and the extremists are badly harassing his family, and he can't do a damn thing about it.

Political tensions are high on every side. The Atevi, even though they're doing very well with the schedule to be the first to get into space and join up with the human starship and to retrofit the abandoned space station, is still on guard from all the factions that could still derail it. The humans are caught in their lies and their inability to pull off the miracles they'd promised to the returning starship. And between them, war is absolutely on the table.

This is exactly what Bren would prevent, and so he's working his butt off to build ever-stronger associations, a spirit of comradeship and helpfulness and the highest tide of well-wishing Atevi the world has ever known, very happy with the humans. Especially Bren. But of course, he has opened all the floodgates of technology that the humans, by the losing side of a treaty, was forced to release to the Atevi slowly so as not to disrupt their civilization. But now, that doesn't really matter any longer because the two societies are practically in parity, with the Atevi in control of vast numbers of truly brilliant workers, all the resources of the planet, and the humans grumbling and generally making asses of themselves, now a minority and a less advanced minority, to boot.

Things could always get worse.

And of course they do. Most of the book is politics, getting into the country with grandma, and dealing with tragedies in the middle of heavy political nightmares. Still, the ending was quite satisfying on a purely emotional level, and that's true not only for me, but for Bren as well. Thank goodness!

( )