No Author’s Answers this week, so we’ll do something a little different.
As strange as it may seem, I have only just 
started reading this series. Weaver has been trying to get me read it for years, but I resisted because I had read some C. J. Cherryh books in the past that I didn’t care for.
This was a mistake.
So far, of the first trilogy, I have enjoyed this book the most. I feel this is where Cherryh really hit her stride. I’m looking forward to reading the others.
For anyone who loves anthropology and linguistics, they will love this book. A huge part of it tied up in the study of the Atevi people. The natives of the planet human has colonized. The plot is mostly political, which I usually don’t enjoy, but it works here. Cherryh really shows just alien a mind can be because of a different culture. This is something I encountered when I first began to study anthropology. If you truly learn about a culture enough to become a part of it, you will forever be an outsider in the culture of your birth.
I highly recommend the series, and this book in particular, to anyone with an interest in reading a truly well thought out alien race. Granted the Atevi aren’t really that different physically, but that just helps illustrate the differences in culture and psychology.