Inheritor by C.J. Cherryh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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!



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