Candace G. (Ogre) reviewed on 10/8/2005 + 1568 more book reviews

It had been nearly 5 centuries since the starship Phoenix, lost in space and desperately searching for the nearest G5 star, had encountered the planet of the Atevi. On this alien world, law was kept by the use of registered assassination, alliancews were defined by individual loyalties, not geographical borders, and war became inevitable once humans and one faction of Atevi established a working relationship. It was a war that humans had no chance of winning on this planet so many light-years from home. Now, nearly 200 years after that conflict, humanity has traded its advanced technology for peace and an island refuge that no Atevi will ever visit. Then the sole human the treaty allows into the Atevi society is marked for an assassin's bullet. the work of an isolated lunatic? The interests of a particular faction? Or the consequence of one human's fondness for a specieswhich has fourteen words for betrayal and ont a single word for love?
Cherryh has done it again---portrayed an alien viewpoint that is extremely not-human, but becomes, through empathy with the characters, something we readers enthusiastically wish to understand.

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