Foreigner
- 378
- Pages
- about 7 h
- Reading time
Affiliate link: buying through it supports BookRank at no extra cost to you.
Our view
Cherryh’s “Foreigner” is a distinctive first-contact novel that strands a lone human among the atevi, whose law runs on registered assassination. Some readers admire how it shows two cultures misreading each other; others are frustrated by how little is explained, by a hero who seems out of his depth or by an abrupt ending. Patient readers who like anthropology in their science fiction will get the most from it; twenty-one volumes await them.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The groundbreaking novel that launched Cherryh's eponymous space opera series of first contact and its consequences... It had been nearly five 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, alliances 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 two hundred 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 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 species which has fourteen words for betrayal and not a single word for love?
Reading order · Foreigner series
Full order & progress →- ForeignerThis book
7.67.6 / 10 - Invader
–Not ranked yet - Inheritor
–Not ranked yet - Precursor
–Not ranked yet - Defender
–Not ranked yet - Explorer
–Not ranked yet - Destroyer
–Not ranked yet - Pretender
–Not ranked yet - Deliverer
–Not ranked yet - ConspiratorConspirator–Not ranked yet
- Deceiver
–Not ranked yet - Betrayer
–Not ranked yet - Intruder
–Not ranked yet - Protector
–Not ranked yet - Peacemaker
–Not ranked yet - Tracker
–Not ranked yet - Visitor
–Not ranked yet - Convergence
–Not ranked yet - Emergence
–Not ranked yet - Resurgence
–Not ranked yet - Divergence
–Not ranked yet
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.2 across 72 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 33% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.6 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 7.2 | 72 | 100% |
Frequently asked
How long is Foreigner?
It has 378 pages — shorter than 66% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Science fiction — and a score of 7.6, the closest to this book.
