That was superb. Foreigner is a first contact novel wrapped in a thriller, the twist being that, this time, it's humans that have landed on an alien planet and having to navigate a completely alien culture.

There are two things that really stand out here, the first of which is the Atevi themselves. This is a truly alien race in terms of their attitudes, their instincts and their culture, and this alienness makes them difficult to comprehend and impossible to fully understand. This keeps Bren permanently off balance as his human instincts are consistently wrong.

The other thing to note is CJ Cherry's writing style. Once Bren is introduced, the story is told entirely from Bren's perspective -- what Bren doesn't know neither does the reader and if Bren doesn't understand the importance of something it won't be mentioned. This approach demands some work from the reader in that there is much that is not explained, but the depth of the story is such that it is well worth the effort.

With Foreigner CJ Cherryh gives us one of the strongest explorations of how cultures interact -- and conflict -- with each other that I have read in a long time. The novel is complex, detailed and utterly gripping and will probably bear reading again.