Description:

It has been nearly ten years since the starship Phoenix returned to Alpha, the station orbiting the world of the atevi, which had been abandoned following a rift between a faction of the station's inhabitants and the spacers' Pilot's Guild. The unexpected return of the Phoenix has forever changed the lives of both atevi and Mospheirans, for over the ensuing decade, the captains of the Phoenix have brought both species into space. Their motivation seemed simple: Reunion Station, a human station in another sector of space, had been destroyed by aliens.

But on his deathbed, the senior captain of the Phoenix admits that he lied to the crew—that Reunion was merely damaged, not destroyed, and many people may have survived. At this disclosure, the crew rebels and forces the Phoenix to undertake a rescue mission to Reunion. Onboard the rescue mission are Bren Cameron, brilliant human paidhi representing the atevi ruler Tabini-aiji, and Tabini's grandmother Ilisidi, a fearsome and ambitious atevi leader with an agenda of her own. Trapped in a distant star system with little fuel left, facing a bellicose alien ship, how can Bren help to avoid interspecies war when the notoriously secretive Pilot's Guild aboard Reunion Station refuse to cooperate, and may have kept the inhabitants of their own station ignorant of their true situation?

The long-running Foreigner series can also be enjoyed by more casual genre readers in sub-trilogy installments. Explorer is the 6th Foreigner novel. It is also the 3rd book in the second subtrilogy.

**

From Publishers Weekly

A third intelligent species makes its appearance in this sixth superior installment in Cherryh's much praised Foreigner Universe series (Defender; Precursor; etc.). The starship Phoenix, manned by a human crew but with a significant contingent of the gigantic, nonhuman atevi aboard, has spent the last year in interstellar transit from the atevi home world to the ruins of Reunion Station, where the repressive Pilots' Guild still clings to power and a mysterious and deadly alien starship lurks on the fringes. Diplomat and translator Bren Cameron and the Phoenix's newly appointed junior captain, Jason Graham, must keep the peace between two powerful, but short-tempered women: Sabin, the ship's senior captain, and Ilisidi, the imperious atevi matriarch who has been entrusted with looking after her species' interests on the voyage. When they reach Reunion Station, the Pilots' Guild first refuses to allow the starship to refuel and then attempts to take it over by force. Sabin's ill-fated attempt to negotiate the release of the fuel leads to some suspenseful complications. As with previous volumes in this intense series, detailed character development, highly charged dialogue and an eye for subtle differences in cultural preconceptions are of central importance, although Cherryh also manages some fine action scenes. This is serious space opera at its very best by one of the leading traditional SF writers in the field today.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Bren Cameron, raised on a planet colonized by humans and home to the race known as atevi, receives an assignment to act as mediator between the human space station Reunion and a nearby mysterious and potentially hostile alien ship. Threading his way through the delicate lines of power aboard the ship taking him to Reunion, however, poses almost as much of a danger as confronting the alien and human threats that await him upon arriving at his destination. Cherryh superbly crafts complex intrigues and alien races possessed of integrity, as well as a sense of otherness, making this conclusion to the second trilogy (Precursor; Defender) set in the universe of human-atevi relations a good choice for most sf collections, particularly where the author has a following.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.