Defiance
by C. J. Cherryh; Jane S. Fancher
The writing is beautiful, the story involved and intriguing. I did find it hard to connect to the book since the first chapter is a history of the world. Which would have been better if I had read more of the series. This is a final chapter of the series that needs to be read.

Love, love, love this series! It never disappoints, each book is intense and as exciting as the first in the series!!

I have been reading this series from the beginning. I also happen to really enjoy C.J. Cherryh's work. That said I have to confess I stopped reading this series a few books ago when the main overwhelming problem for the cycle of three books was getting nowhere resolved. So picking it up again I worried a little that I may be spoiling something. I hadn't, the main overwhelming problem ( getting the station humans down to Mospheria) still hasn't been resolved. This fact frustrates me. There is also the fact that a good 10% of the book is Bren recaping the last arc where nothing happens with the overwhelming issue (tm). I really get annoyed with long recaps. So this book is taking a while for me to read. Luckily it is picking up with some movement, excitement and worry about Ilsidi. I'm still not completely done reading this book, and it is far more wordy than C.J.'s books have been in the past. Talking about what this group or that group thinks about each other and how that doesn't fit with human behavioral norms. At this point in the series you know how it doesn't fit. Also do NOT start the foreigner series with this book as you will not understand anything that is going on. There is way to many complex us and them politics and behavior for you to follow if you do. This series builds on prior books. All in all a good book for die hard Cherryh and Foreigner series fans. And not for beginners. Thanks for the advanced copy to read netgalley and Cherryh.

CJ Cherry continues the Foreigner series in Defiance. Bren Cameron follows Ilisidi, the aiji dowager, in her pursuit of bringing parts of aiji world into the governing association. Bren is human but he plays a fundamental role of negotiator in the aiji world. An ongoing and engaging look at a human in an alien environment. Read and enjoy.

When a series is mythic and it's the 22nd instalment you must find some wikifan site and a crash course in what was before.
That said I will read what was before because I thoroughly enjoyed the style of writing and the world building.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Going in blind!

Last time we saw Bren Cameron, paidhi-aiji, human translator to Tabini-aiji, he was on the Red Train fleeing from, or racing towards, an undisclosed location with the Atevi aiji-dowager Ilisidi, various Guild members, including Bren’s own staff, important lords. All vital to the canny dowager’s plans—as we can best guess, to rid the realm of the Shadow Guild before it rebuilds.
The long, long train journey, only stopping for fuel seems to be heading towards Bren and Lord Geigi lands, on the coast.
During the journey the Dowager is not seen for days. There’s been no communication with Bren, and Bren can’t communicate with Tabini, as Cenedi (ilisidi’s body guard) hasn’t passed on to him the secure com as ordered by Tabini (head of the atevi aishidi’tat).
Meanwhile overhead the space station is sending some 5000 humans down to the surface. Who’s to meet them? How to handle this?
Lord Reijiri of Dur and his yellow biplane make an appearance, along with a longtime friend of Ilisidi’s, Lord Tatiseigi.
Cajeiri who’s about to turn unfelituous ten has a hand in persuading both these Atevi to take action.
Tabini and Cajeiri are concerned for the Dowager. She’s ill. She’s way down South. She hasn’t named an heir. If anything should happen to her that would be a personal blow and a major political disruption.
Oh, the wily Dowager might be down, but one can never underestimate her.
For me this was exhilarating as more pieces of the Atevi/Human story come together. Entrenched in this world I’m thrilled to join even more dots on the canvas of the Atevi story and of humans come as strangers to this land. Humans who are divided into different groups. All have changed, those who came down to the surface, and those who continued to man the space station awaiting the return of a third group, the space voyagers. All sets of humans need to understand the Atevi mindset, so different to their own. That difference is fraught and dangerous. How to coexist is problematic. The human story will be out of balance.
I’ve been reading this series down the years since the first title came out and love it.
I recommend if you’re new to Cherryh’s world of the Atevi you start further back. Ideally from the beginning.

A DAW ARC via NetGalley.
Many thanks to the author and publisher.
(Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.)

I just finished reading DEFIANCE. It was a wonderful experience and I must confess I stretched it because I wanted to enjoy it as long as possible. Needless to say, I am a fan of this series and this latest installment is one of her best. Cajeiri is a great character and he is so mature for his age. In spite of her health problems, the author did a marvelous job with this book and I am looking forward to the next installment. The series reminds me of another author I also enjoy, L.E. Modessitt and The Grand Illusion series, Both series are very political in a different world setting.
I highly recommend this book to all of Cherryh's fans.

I just finished Defiance by C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher and I had a blast reading it. Defiance is the twenty-second book in the Foreigner saga and these stories continue to captivate. Defiance also begins what should be a new three book arc focused on Bren Cameron. Be warned: This is not a standalone read. While the writing is, as usual, outstanding - there are so many moving parts to this story that you really need to be reading the series. And it's a great series by some of the great authors of science fiction.

There is trouble brewing again and Bren has to get the aiji-dowager back to the capital while he worries about human refugees needing to land on planet. During their travels, all manner of crises happen and you will be on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens.

Defiance (Foreigner #22)
Defiance by C.J. Cherryh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have a pretty straightforward review for this new book in the Foreigner series. It's basically consolidation and worrying ramifications of the shadow guild throughout the various areas of the mainland.

If you know the series at all, you'll know it's great in the details, the nearly overwhelming worldbuilding that feels like parts of late feudal Japan, alien culture, and technological espionage.

This particular book isn't breaking a lot of new ground, but it is still fascinating and entertaining. Just remembering everything that came before is almost as fun as the new developments.

Would I recommend it?

Of course. It's very much more of the same, but that's usually a double-edged sword. If you've come this far, you're basically wondering if there's any dip in quality. There isn't. My only complaint is how much of the first part of the novel is devoted to recap and exposition. In this case, I can't quite fault it. So much HAS happened.

Welcome back to the series!

Slower than usual. Story moves with each character. For fans of the series. History added section at end.

It’s amazing how strong each book in the Foreigner saga has been. This book had everything that I was hoping for from the series and author. It works well in the scifi genre and the characters felt like they should from this series. It left me wanting to read more in this series and from the author.

Cherryh's Foreigner series are typically written in trilogies within the larger arc of the series. Defiance is the first book in the eighth arc which takes Bren and his aishid (bodyguards) into a conflict in the western port of Jorida Island. This is new territory on the atevi world and Cherryh provides background information in the text and in an addendum to place the story in context. There are plenty of nail-biting moments as the characters engage in political and strategic maneuvering in a conflict situation decades in the making, both within the world of the atevi and in the story that Cherryh has been telling for nearly 30 years.

Newcomers will want to start with the first book, Foreigner.

I first met Carolyn Cherry in 1976, when I was a young librarian in Dallas and she was still teaching Latin in the Oklahoma public schools, and had just published _Brothers of Earth,_ her first novel, She attended AggieCom in College Station (her first con, too, I believe), and was startled at being mobbed by a horde of enthusiastic new fans. I was one of them, and I’ve read and enjoyed everything she’s written in the nearly half-century since then. Of course, she’s now a Grand Master and is regarded as having inherited the mantle of Ursula LeGuin when it comes to alien worldbuilding. Cherryh’s coauthor on this, as well as several other recent novels, is Jane Fancher, her partner for many years and her wife since 2014. You won’t really be able to tell which of them was responsible for which parts of the book, though, their joint effort is so seamless.

This series has been organized since its beginning into three-volume plot arcs, within the larger story of what one may think of as “The Saga of Bren Cameron,” and this is Vol. 22, so it’s the beginning of a new section of the story. Cherryh doesn’t do big info dumps at the beginning of each installment to remind you of what you read in the previous book maybe a year ago, but this time -- since it is a new three-volume section -- she spends the whole first chapter summarizing recent events. She also includes some reminders of how very different things are psychologically between the native atevi on their earth-like world and the unintentionally immigrant humans, who live on their legally isolated island of Mosphera, and also what Bren's role is as paidhi-aiji to Tabini-aiji, head of the aishdi'tat (which amounts to a confederation of clans). It won’t take you long to get up to speed, though, as the narrative begins to open up and new crises develop.

Many of the earlier volumes have focused on the Dowager, Ilisidi, the aiji’s grandmother and a true force of nature, and that continues here. She rules the eastern part of the continent in her own right and served as regent for extended periods in the past following the early deaths of first her husband and then her son. She has enormous personal and political power and is extremely canny, but now she’s also very old. That didn’t stop her from attempting to solve the aishdi’tat’s centuries-old problems with the Marid, a desert region to the south, both diplomatically and militarily, as detailed in the previous volume. The remnants of the Shadow Guild (a thoroughly venal and very dangerous spin-off of the legitimate Assassin’s Guild who had attempted Tabini’s overthrow a few years ago and came appalling close to succeeding) are now on the run, having escaped the Dowager's clutches, and are now attempting to reestablish themselves farther up the coast, not far from Bren’s own estate. And Ilisidi seems to have fallen gravely ill at the worst possible time.

The second focus of the story is Tabini’s son, Cajeiri, the equivalent of a human teenager (he’s about to turn ten, but this world’s years are longer), and who (two books ago) was announced as his father’s official heir-designate. We’ve watched him grow up from early childhood in this series, under the strong influence not only of his great-grandmother but of Bren -- and, through him, has become connected to a number of young humans his own age -- the result being an intelligent young atevi unlike any that world has seen before. He just thinks differently than any others of his people, and he takes his position very seriously, but he’s also still a kid. (I will be very interested to see how things change when he eventually comes to power, if the series continues that long.) The thing is, Cajeiri has been in space (with the Dowager and Bren, a very tense story which occupied several volumes), has met and dealt with two powerful alien species that are far more different from himself than he is from the humans, and he understands certain things better than his father would be able to. Cajeiri unstands that one must sometimes take chances, and events this time are necessarily going to accelerate his progress to maturity.

This entire series presents a great many parallel plotlines over a lengthy period of time, all of them complex and interwoven. (In a Cheryh novel, everything is always closely connected to everything else.) To a reader like me, this whole world, and the people in it, and the way they interact, is deeply fascinating. I know the extended observations of the characters’ thought processes as they deal with events will probably be off-putting to readers who prefer their space opera to be heavy on zap-guns and starship battles -- and indeed, there is always some of that in every book, too. But I prefer a more intellectual sort of science fiction adventure, and this saga may well be the best work of that sort every produced in English.

Defiance is a book with a lot of moving pieces, and continues the "Ilisidi and Bren on a Train Trip Chasing Down the Shadow Guild and Making Alliances," storyline begun in Resurgence. This book takes a worryingly retrospective turn when it becomes apparent that Ilisidi is not well and appears to be operating under the assumption that she has a limited amount of time to finally establish her ultimate goal. (Which is apparently uniting the all of the continent's geopolitical associations.) Since Ilisidi is the cornerstone of all of these developing alliances, there's an immediate panic when she collapses at a train station-because if she falls ill and dies, the entire Jenga tower of alliances and agreements will fall apart.

Among the panicked parties is of course Bren, her grandson Tabini, and her great grandson Cajieri. Everyone's favorite catalyst for plot complications is panicked enough to...not to run headlong into trouble by himself this time. He does however still manage to get into hot water due to involving Great Uncle Tatseigi and Reijiri of Dur (everyone's favorite pilot) in the situation. The kid's allegiance toward his grandmother and having less of a manchi toward his parents while also being very much a leader-type results in Cajieri not understanding "you should probably have consulted with your father instead of going headlong into the situation again." (Cajieri would not be Cajieri if he was not causing someone somewhere a migraine.) Cajieri as of Defiance also has been given more responsibilities, and has been given a position that will be instrumental to getting the refugees off of the space station. (Before the space station literally falls apart because there are too many people living in terrible conditions. It is not a situation with a quick or easy solution due to communication breakdowns and a lack of an ability to evacuate the refugees quickly.)

So again, a lot of moving parts, and Bren is mostly at a loss because Ilisidi is keeping him in a near total communication black out. You can however get a sense for why she's probably doing it--Bren tends to work really well under pressure, and it's clear she's putting him in a situation where he can have lots of it! This is great if you need a solution and are Ilisidi, but much less great if you are Bren Cameron who has to pull miracles out of your unique perspective as a human translator up to his neck in nonhuman politics.

Defiance is not a great book to start with if you are just entering the series. (Which is a given since the series is a long one at twenty books or so.) Some of the plot threads are engaging, but there is also a feel that this is all somewhat drawn out more than it has to be. (Though that's my usual feeling about very long series.) Any of the later Foreigner books are going to be bad places to start off from, but this one especially requires an understanding of the what's happened previously.

Some highlights I found engaging:

- Lord Tatiseigi arriving to fuss at Ilisidi due to Cajieri setting him up with a plane ride (via Our Favorite Pilot).
- Lord Tatiseigi who has come a long way from the distant and hostile lord he was at the beginning of the series being friendly (well, for values of friendly including "atevi don't do friendly") with Bren and also considering Rejieri an associate/a neighbor!
- Cajieri's continuing character arc of "becoming more mature and developing a greater understanding of the larger world." We get to see a lot of how his thinking has been shaped by both his great grandmother and Bren. We also see his continuing struggles to relate in a meaningful way with his parents.
- There are some epistolary bits from an atevi biography/history book about Ilisidi and her goals/successes/history. A lot of it is stuff we already know from what Bren learned earlier in the series but it's an atevi history book so it reads like "outsider point of view." And I love me some Outsider POV.
- Various characters having to deal with Ilisidi taking such huge risks with her health while in pursuit of her goals.
- Ilisidi herself and her interactions with the Edi, who are a different ethnic group from the Ragi. (A marginalized ethnic group that the Ragi have not generally treated very well or very fairly.)

This review is based on a galley copy of the book received from NetGalley.

Defiance is the latest in Ms. Cherryh's (and now Ms. Fancher's) long running Foreigner series. This series is generally structured as sets of trilogies. Defiance concludes (at least by my reading, I know the Wiki disagrees) the main plot line from Resurgence and Divergence. As usual plenty of things are not wrapped up. Nor should they be. That is not the way life works.
The writers (Ms. Fancher now has co writing credit for the books) are masters of the early chapter recaps so one does not need to re read earlier books. What I particularly like about their recaps is they add new information mixed with the old. So they are not boring.
I don't like spoilers or regurgitating the plot in my comments. So I won't. But I will say that the young heir of Dur deserves some consideration beyond what he has already received from Bren, Taibini, Cajeiri, and Tatiseigi. And, darn it, I can not recall his name. And the wiki does not list him. I rest my case.
Four stars instead of five because there are several in the series I love more and I must differentiate them somehow.