Foreigner is not bad, it's just not as great as it might be.
Ultimately, he is so caught up in his shorts he is about as effective in dealing with the atevi and his own human government as Neville Chamberlain was in dealing with Hitler. To make matters much worse, Bren over-analyzes his own feelings and actions and everyone else's to the point that you just want to smack him. In addition, Bren suffers both poisoning and severe bodily injury so he's in pain, both emotional and physical, throughout both books and we, the listeners, are stuck seeing all the action through this guy who cannot ever get it together. (Poor humans with their fate in this inept ambassador's hands!) Foreigner and Invader are both told from a Third Person Limited Point of View and the POV is Bren who spends ALL of both of the first two books in varying emotional states of terror, panic, hysteria, confusion, and depression. He's hard not to like because the guy is decent and trying so hard, but he's supposed to be the best ambassador (paidhi) to the atevi that the human settlement has to offer and he is completely CLUELESS. It's not that you won't like Bren Cameron. Unfortunately, she makes us look at this interesting scenario and fascinating "others" through the eyes of one of the most emotionally volatile, naive (immature?), bumbling characters I've ever read. C J Cherryh is terrific at painting an anthropological sci-fi study of a foreign people with their own culture, politics, biology, and language. A colonial starship goes off course and a group of colonists is forced to set up shop on a planet in an unknown star system already inhabited by a sentient species. The setup and backdrop for the Foreigner Universe is absolutely wonderful.
I won't be spending any more credits on this series, but it isn't the pacing that is putting me off, it's the main character that I just cannot stomach any longer. I have now finished Foreigner and Invader (Book2) and I've made my decision. However, several reviewers have said that the series picks up after Book 1 so I decided to try at least two books in this series. I've hesitated because several reviewers have commented on the slow pace of the first book, Foreigner: Foreigner Sequence 1, Book 1, and I tend to get frustrated with slow books.
I have been considering the Foreigner series for awhile and since Audible has recently added some more titles to the series I decided to take the plunge.
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