**Aliens are Invading! But First, Tea **
*There is nothing more dangerous than politics without information. *
A book about politics and diplomacy should be my jam. After the events of Foreigner, the human spaceship makes contact with both human colonists and Atevi aliens, creating opportunities for tripartite negotiations and treachery on all sides.
In Invader, Atevi characters continue to become more familiar, while the humans both in the spaceship and Mospheira become inscrutable. This might be the first book where pacing was a real issue for me. Cherryh teases interesting events and character interactions yet I’ve seen glaciers advance faster than Cherryh writes the plot. Most pages are filled with talk of tea service and potential assassination attempts. Of course nothing happens during teas service or assassination attempts, just discussion about seating arrangements at the next one. After enough iterations, even real assassination attempts and tea service get boring. In Baghdad when a rocked would explode, it wasn’t even worth getting up for.
The plot is interesting, the characters are fascinating, but I may have already had enough diplomatic breakfast services for a lifetime.
** 57th book of 2021 **