In this ninth installment of the Foreigner Series ends are tied up nicely for the end of this trilogy. One earnestly hopes that this is by no means the end of this wonderful series.
Because, although there are several series that are popular in the Sci-Fi- / Fantasy genre that have this many volumes, all of them that I have read have lost so much steam, that I am looking forward to being tied up once and for all and finally ended. For with the rest of them, while I have too much time tied up to not read the conclusion, I dread reading another 500, or 1,000 pages of drivel to get there. This is absolutely not the case with the Foreigner Series. The story just gets better and better as the characters are more and more fully developmed.
Deliverer is another wonderfully plotted story, with more action than any of the Foreigner books except the immediate precursor story Pretender. In Deliverer, we begin to see where the Future of Atevia is headed in the next generation as well as the problems that will stir the pot for the next cycle of the story.
Again, this is not the place to start this series; it will make absolutely no sense to the first time reader of the series. So if you haven't read them already do yourself the favor of starting at the beginning with Foreigner and read through this wonderful series all the way to Deliverer. You find it realistic and believable, and I believe the best allegory on the subject of diversity and inclusion ever written.
I envy you!
If you are new to reading Ms. Cherryh, let me prepare you a bit.
C J Cherryh is in my opinion, the greatest writer of our time and maybe ever, in creating new cultures, and worlds. All of her stories have a very large amount of introspection, the protagonist will always suffer from some kind of alienation and be realistically flawed. All of the action in any of her stories is necessary not gratuitous. All of her stories require a lot of set up and character development, because you will be in a completely foreign environment, so expect to read a bit before the story gets going. All of the protagonist will be smart; the dialog will require you to think to keep up. There will never be unfair gotcha moments, only plots that rightfully unfold due to events. And as a final point, almost always, you have to remember details, because what is usually the end of other writers' stories, the climactic event, is generally the beginning of a Cherryh story, because you will see, that as in life, the really interesting stuff lie in the ripples of the pond not the splash itself. She has managed to keep details meshed throughout over 50 novels without having to change rules anywhere.
So, by all means please buy this book, and keep Ms. Cherryh, and her publishers working to write more. But... you owe it to yourself to start at the beginning of the story and read though before you begin Deliverer, and travel to a place that is so foreign, yet so real, you will feel that it must exist.