Inheritor, Foreigner Series #3, by C.J.Cherryh. rating= 4

*****note***** I was interrupted in typing this, and shall have to come back and revise and add on my other thoughts later.

in Foreigner, we had a dissection of Bren. in Invader, we took a good long look at Deana. in Inheritor, we get a view of Jase. not that they are, respectively, the sole focus of the books in any regard whatsoever, hardly so!, but Cherryh does try to add some new faces in to the mix every time to explore what it means to be human (or atevi, for that matter). my talking just about the new faces is a great simplification of the story! if I were to actually delve into all the possible topics in each story, why, I could write an entire anthology for each book! I never claim to cover all the possibilities ;)

ah, Jase. he's got sensory issues. that, I understand! sheer unadulterated panic, with no regards whatsoever to logic or rationality or even to the obvious non-presence of danger or to a million billion reassurances from all around.

and it's a reversal of situations. not even Bren tells Jase anything, and when Jase asks what's going on, Bren just says, "Don't worry. Just relax." that didn't work for Bren, and Bren has a much better grip on his temper, at least physically. but it takes Bren a long while to understand that source of Jase's frustration. it also doesn't occur to Bren that Jase is in physical pain from riding, until Bren starts to feel the pain himself, and even then I'm not sure that he recalls how much worse it is for a beginning rider. or figures ALL the things going on with Jase into one equation. it's not just not knowing what's going on, or not knowing whom to trust, or that Jase has problems processing sensory input, or that Jase is in physical pain and fear of his life. it's ALL of them, compounded. Bren doesn't seem to grasp that very well. for all the self-analyzing he does, Bren doesn't appear to try to figure out other humans naturally, or at least he doesn't do it very well (when dealing with all the other crises HE has, on top of things. it's not as if Bren is not distracted!). my point is that--- Bren's TRAINED to dissect his own feelings, and to try very hard to dissect what might be going on in an ateva's mind (a double-and triple-checking to avoid interspecies mistakes), but he's NOT used to trying to figure out the humans in his life. when he does actually sit down and concentrate on it, he amazes himself with things he never realized before. analyzing himself and the atevi is something he does all the time, without hardly thinking about it; analyzing humans he doesn't seem to do until things (start to) go wrong.

but, honestly Jase, if you're going to trust anyone on the mainland, it should be Bren. you can't even tell him what specifically is your difficulty? ah these people are so proud. Jase is angry most often because he's too proud to just say what needs to be said. does he think that Bren automatically understands what is bothering him, when Bren says he doesn't? does he think Bren is lying about that too? gee, Bren is a criminal mastermind or something. Occam's Razor, please. but Jase has never seen outsiders before in his life, and can't open up even that much, even when it's the smart thing to do. even probably when he wants to do so. well, well, well.

layers upon layers. these characters are all onions, I tell you. haven't found a non-onion character in Cherryh yet.

But, oh, the view from up there was glorious, when the sun turned the snow gold and the evergreens black in the evenings. / When the mists came up off the blue shadows and the wind whispered across the frozen surface in the morning--- then he was alive. / It would have terrified Jase.
pg. 269

other quotes:
The atevi brain, steered by the principal atevi language (a chicken or the egg situation),
pg. 16

He'd been riding a fierce downhill course, and leaping from point to point to point until it was damn well no good mapping out where he'd been: where he'd been didn't exist any more.
pg. 78

Bren is a verb, pg. 312.
a lovely conversation on pg. 121
man'chi: pgs. 107, 190, 218, 330, 365.