Hm. I enjoy the worldbuilding, the backstory, of this whole series rather more than I'm enjoying the actual story. Part of the problem is that I don't think the main character, the hero, is nearly the most interesting character in the book; I don't find him as unconvincing as the young man in Forge of Heaven, but he doesn't have the internal drama that many of the supporting cast presumably have.
Specifically, I don't believe he really has divided or uncertain loyalties. He ought to. He thinks he does, sometimes at annoying length. The driving force of the alien society in which he lives is loyalty, its demands and subterranean faults; so there should be a hell of a story in which human loyalties are backgrounded and backlit by the alien loyalties. But I don't believe it. Eight novels in and his behavior is, meseems, getting more and more predictable, given the actually complex and ambivalent stimuli of the characters around him.
Also, I admit, I am annoyed and unconvinced by yet another infallible, loyal-and-loving suite of retainers. There's no moral excuse for SF's dependence on this trope, and Cherryh knows too much history for her to think it likely. That's why I still like the backstory and worldbuilding; nothing is guaranteed there, so it feels far more real.
ISBN: 0756402530
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