C. J. Cherryh Books

Bren and Illisidi must protect young prince Cajeiri and the human children who have come to visit for his birthday from the dangerous split compromising the Assassin's Guild.

The fifteenth novel in Cherryh's Foreigner space opera series, a groundbreaking tale of first contact and its consequences... Civil war on the world of the atevi is finally over. And Cajeiri, son and heir of Tabini-aiji, atevi leader of the dominant Western Association, is about to celebrate his fortunate ninth birthday. Bren Cameron, brilliant human diplomat allied with Tabini, has managed to arrange a visit for Cajeiri's three special associates from the starship Phoenix--ordinary human children who developed a bond with Cajeiri during his two years in space. After a year of political upheaval, this is a happy event: the heir is safe, the aiji is back in power, and a massive celebration is planned in the capital. The whole world is watching. But Bren Cameron has received evidence that security has been severely compromised from the aiji's high office on downward. The powerful Assassins' Guild--which provides the judicial system, law enforcement, and personal protection in atevi society--is in the hands of a man who would like to turn the entire world back two centuries. Bren now knows the details of a decades- old plot that's been threaded through Guild actions since before his arrival on the continent. The enemy's best chance is to strike now, at the public celebration that is much too important and far too advanced to cancel. Bren and his associates have no choice. If they don't make the first move, the other side will. And the lives of the heir, his innocent human guests, and the entire ruling family are at stake. The long-running Foreigner series can also be enjoyed by more casual genre readers in sub-trilogy installments. Peacemaker is the 15th Foreigner novel, and the 3rd book in the fifth subtrilogy.

They were the mri—tall, secretive, bound by honor and the rigid dictates of their society. For aeons this golden-skinned, golden-eyed race had provided the universe mercenary soldiers of almost unimaginable ability. But now the mri have faced an enemy unlike any other—an enemy whose only way of war is widespread destruction. These "humans" are mass fighters, creatures of the herb, and the mri have been slaughtered like animals. Now, in the aftermath of war, the mri face extinction. It will be up to three individuals to save whatever remains of this devastated race: a warrior—one of the last survivors of his kind; a priestess of this honorable people; and a lone human—a man sworn to aid the enemy of his own kind. Can they retrace the galaxy-wide path of this nomadic race back through millennia to reclaim the ancient world which first gave them life? "This is a powerful story…inspiring in its determination and feeling of strange loyalties and stranger courage. It sticks in the mind long after the last page is finished."-- Analog

The nineteenth book in C.J. Cherryh's beloved Foreigner space opera series begins a new era for diplomat Bren Cameron, as he navigates the tenuous peace he has struck between human refugees and the alien atevi. Alpha Station, orbiting the world of the atevi, has taken aboard five thousand human refugees from a destroyed station in a distant sector of space. With supplies and housing stretched to the breaking point, it is clear that the refugees must be relocated down to the planet, and soon. But not to the atevi mainland: rather to the territory reserved for human, the island of Mospheira. Tabini-aiji, the powerful political head of the atevi, tasks his brilliant human diplomat, Bren Cameron, to negotiate with the Mospheiran government. For the Alpha Station refugees represent a political faction that the people of Mospheira broke from two centuries ago, and these Mospheirans are not enthusiastic about welcoming these immigrants from space.

It has been two years since the starship Phoenix left Alpha Station on a rescue mission to a faraway sector of space where over four thousand human spacers were under attack by a hostile alien race. Now, the Phoenix is almost home, having successfully rescued the stranded colonists through the combined negotiating talents of Bren Cameron-brilliant human paidhi to the atevi court, currently representing Tabini-aiji, the atevi ruler-and of Tabini's grandmother llisidi, the aiji-dowager, a fearsome, wily, and ambitious atevi leader in her own right

The nineteenth book in the beloved Foreigner space opera series begins a new era for human diplomat Bren Cameron, as he navigates the tenuous peace between human refugees and the alien atevi. Bren Cameron, acting as the representative of the atevi's political leader, Tabini-aiji, as well as translator between humans and atevi, has undertaken a mission to the human enclave of Mospheira. Both his presence on the island and his absence from the continent have stirred old enemies to realize new opportunities. Old hatreds. Old grudges. Old ambitions. The situation has strengthened the determination of power- seekers on both sides of the strait. Bren knows most of them very well, but not all of them well enough. The space station on which the world increasingly relies is desperate to get more supplies up to orbit and to get a critical oversupply of human refugees down to the world below. Rationing is in force on the station, but the overpopulation problem has to be solved quickly--and Bren's mission on Mospheira has expanded to include preparation for that landing. First down will be the three children to whom Tabini's son has a close connection. But following them will be thousands of humans who have never set foot on a planet, humans descended from colonists and officers who split off from Mospheiran humans two hundred years before in a bitter parting of the ways. There is no way the atevi, native to the world, will cede any more land to these new arrivals: they will have to share the island. But certain Mospheirans are willing to use force to prevent these refugees from settling among them. Bren's job is as general peacemaker--but old enemies want war. Is Bren's diplomatic acumen enough to prevent a war that both sides are prepared to wage?

Now in mass market, the twentieth book in the beloved Foreigner saga returns to the trials of diplomat Bren Cameron, as he navigates the tenuous peace he has struck between human refugees and the alien atevi. Bren Cameron, diplomat in residence, usually represents the ruler of the atevi state. But Ilisidi, the dowager, has been known to borrow his services from time to time—and she has her own notions how to solve the simmering hostilities in the south of the atevi continent, playing one problem against another. This time, she is betting the hard-won northern peace—and the lives of the people—on being right. She has commandeered the Red Train, taken aboard what passengers she chooses, and headed for the snowy roof of the world, where a hard-scrabble town and its minor lord are the first pieces she intends to use.

"The overthrow of the Atevi head of state, Tabini-aiji, and the several moves of enemies even since his restoration, have prompted major changes in the Assassins' Guild, which has since worked to root out its seditious elements - a clandestine group they call the Shadow Guild. With the Assassins now rid of internal corruption, with the birth of Tabini's second child, and with the appointment of an heir, stability seems to have returned to the Atevi world. Humans and Atevi share the space station in peaceful cooperation, humans and Atevi share the planet as they have for centuries, and the humans' island enclave is preparing to welcome 5000 human refugees from a remote station now dismantled, and to do that in unprecedented cooperation with the Atevi mainland. In General Bren Cameron, Tabini-aiji's personal representative, returning home to the Atevi capital after securing that critical agreement, was ready to take a well-earned rest - until Tabini's grandmother claimed his services on a train trip to the smallest, most remote and least significant of the provinces, snowy Hasjuran - a move concerning which Tabini-aiji gave Bren a private instruction: protect her. Advise her. Advise her - perhaps. As for protection, she has a trainload of high-level Guild. But since the Aiji-dowager has also invited a dangerously independent young warlord, Machigi, and a young man who may be the heir to Ajuri, a key northern province - the natural question is why the dowager is taking this ill-assorted pair to Hasjuran and what on this earth she may be up to. With a Shadow Guild attack on the train station, it has become clear that others have questions, too. Hasjuran, on its mountain height, overlooks the Marid, a district that is part of the Atevi nation only in name - a district in which Machigi is one major player, and where the Shadow Guild retains a major stronghold. Protect her? Ilisidi is hellbent on settling scores with the Shadow Guild, and her reasons for this trip and this company now become clear. One human diplomat and his own bodyguard suddenly seem a very small force to defend her from what she is setting in motion."--Publisher