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

Hooked from start to finish. This series is consistently awesome and even more so when guns aren't blazing.

What do I mean?

It's all about the politics.

One of my simmering complaints of the first 12 books in the series, with perhaps an exception of the first, was that Tabini, the leader of the Association and Bren's supposedly staunchest ally and supporter, is generally off the stage. We get plenty of all of the other factions and relatives, not to mention his fantastic grandmother or his own son who gets a PoV in the last trilogy, but very little is ever truly revealed about Tabini himself. He always shows up late in the story or near the opening and then things go to hell and he's off doing leader stuff.

That didn't really bother me all that much until now, just when his reveals and his unburdening to Bren and his family's woes took the forefront and I was left breathless for more.

Nope. Not a gunshot fired. Maybe some ruined curtains and stains on the floor, but no guns fired.

And yet this was one one of my favorites in the series. The politics is rife and ripe throughout, always simmering hotly below the surface. So many situations and histories are meant to be questioned and the whole shadow war and the civil war is cast into a new light. I was thrilled!

Of course, a certain infelicitous eight is getting better, on the whole, but as anyone knows, if you give that kid an inch, he'll use it to tie a knot around his neck. Very amusing. What a monkey. :)

All the other reveals make this book fantastic and now we see the heart of all the conflicts. Pretty amazing. :)

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