Now they have aircraft and computer networks. The atevi are bigger, stronger and faster than humans, and had already reached the steam age at the time of the landing. The story focuses on one paidhi, Bren Cameron, at a time of crisis between the races. Only one human was allowed off the island, the paidhi, who lived with the atevi in order to monitor and understand them while relaying technical knowledge as they were ready for it. The rest of the story is set six generations later, after a human-atevi war which had led to an accommodation being reached the humans were allowed sole occupancy of a large island in return for gradually introducing their advanced technology to the atevi. The scene is set in couple of introductory chapters centuries apart the initial catastrophic journey which caused the starship to become lost, and the first contact after planetfall between the human settlers and the natives (the atevi). I read a lot of Cherryh's books in the 1970s and liked them enough to keep them to re-read sometime, but I have neglected her work since then so I turned to Foreigner with interest. These are the key elements of Cherryh's 1994 novel, the start of a series running to nine volumes so far (with more to come). A lost colony ship, a desperate landfall on an unknown planet, and an intelligent native humanoid race with very different mental processes.
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