The aiji's son Cajeiri is restless and bored as only an eight year old heir can be. He thinks his attempts at escape from parental authority are exciting. However, a challenger for the throne has plans to make Caijeiri's boring life very scary and dangerous.

As always, engaging and riveting read by this author. ( )

I am consistently pleased with this series and this one does not disappoint. It wraps up the third semi-trilogy that follows Bren Cameron, human translator for the Atevi/now Lord of the Heavens, friend and confidant to Atevi Lords and little Atevi children.

The great part of this book is that we finally get a new PoV. Cajeiri, the Son of Tabini, the great-grandson of Ilsisdi, is missing his human friends aboard the spaceship and is semi-successful in fitting in with the rest of the Atevi. He likes tech and is doing all he can to sneak away from his protectors.

What can go wrong?

Truly, even though I've always loved Bren from the start and he's becoming more and more confident in his position in the world, he does make a few mistakes along the way. That's all right. That's Bren. He always thinks his way through problems and he's as loyal a companion as anyone could want.

Cajeiri, however, has a big problem on his hands. He's not growing up with all the proper instincts of an Atevi. For one, he's ignoring his instincts and following a code of "friendship", and he doesn't think it's a code for "salad". Things are gonna get really hairy, now. :)

There's more action and intrigue in this one. Quite fun action and intrigue! But above all, it's the world-building that shines. I live here. I belong here. It's a world that lives and breathes and it's a shining example of SF if there ever was one. It only seems to get better with time. Fantastic! ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2020/02/review-of-deliverer-by-cj-cherryh.html ( )

To read more reviews, check out my blog keikii eats books!

Quote:

“Be at ease,” Tabini said, which surely meant it was not bad news in the offing, so he felt free to draw an easier breath. “You cannot think, nand’ paidhi, that your actions are in any sense disapproved. You should by no means seem so ill at ease.”
Did it show that badly? He tried to settle. “One hopes that this is the case, aiji-ma,” he said, “but it was a long voyage, and the aishidi’tat has seen a great deal of disturbance in the interim.”

Review:
Deliverer is a bit of an odd book. I think I rated it so highly only because it rode on the coattails of the previous books. On it's own I was.... a bit confused what the hell the point of it even was. Plus the narration wasn't just Bren. No, it was Bren and Cajeiri, the leader of the Atevi's son. Who is eight years old. Effectively transforming this series into an adult/children's book hybrid that somehow manages to mostly work.

In the beginning of the book, the first 40-50 or so percent, we establish that things are slowly returning to the way things were before a civil war broke out across the planet. Things have been changed irrevocably, and it is inherently less safe, but it is returning to normal. Bren is going back to his job, and he is talking to Tabini about things that may happen in the future.

Yet this also sets up the story of Cajeiri, the boy who is very, very confused at what he is. He spent a long time with humans, but he is Atevi. He knows humans better than he knows his own people. He doesn't like how things are down on earth, he doesn't like the changes in his life. He wants things to go back the way they are. And he is trying his damnedest to control his surroundings.

.... And then the rest of the book is Cajeiri has been kidnapped and Bren of all people have to go after him. The human diplomat to the atevi aishidi'tat. (This makes no sense lol). It's a whole bunch of politics, very quickly. and most of the kidnapping isn't even from Cajeiri's perspective, which is where you would expect it to be utilized the most, until towards the end. It just.. didn't seem to matter to the overall series. It didn't tie up the trilogy well. It didn't seem to do anything, and it distracted from other big going ons. I can only assume that it will play some part later on but for now it just seems out of place and a not so good ending to a trilogy. (Future keikii: it did not.)

Still loved reading it, though. Because Cherryh is magic. ( )

Book nine in C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner series of novels, which are set on a world shared by a lost colony of humans and an alien species called the atevi, and are full of politics, extra-planetary threats, and uneasy conflicts between traditional atevi culture and technological changes introduced by humans.

I have to admit, I think I'm getting to the point in this series where the slow pace that is so often typical of Cherryh, and is definitely typical of these books, is starting to wear on my patience a little bit. For the first half of this installment, nothing whatsoever happens; it's really all about getting things back to normal after the events of the previous volume. Then when something does finally happen, that something is interesting and engaging and occasionally rather exciting, but it also takes a good long while to tell and drags significantly in the middle. This sort of thing can be a little tiring.

On the other hand, I was utterly delighted to discover that, after I complained in my review of the last volume that it was getting old being stuck in one particular character's POV all the time, even when he wasn't a major player in the action, we were finally given a second viewpoint character here. And a great choice of additional POV it was, too: the fresh, engaging, likable voice of someone who was involved in doing at least a few interesting things. More than that, it's an atevi voice (even if that of an atevi highly influenced by humans), which gives us a welcome new window into the minds and culture of the species. And learning more about that culture and those alien thought processes has always been one of the big draws of the series. I'm really hoping we get to see a lot more of this in future volumes. ( )