With the help of two refugees from a penal colony, three earthmen, separated from a fourth on the planet Torin, elude capture by the Great Elder and gain cooperation for their mission.
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This review is from: Nearest Fire (Timescape Book) (Paperback)
In this sequel to The Luck of Brin's Five, two fugitives on the planet Torin end up pitting themselves against a powerful clan elder to help a Terran survey team. The story is told by Yolo Harn, a female miner who is sent to the penal colony of Itsik for assault after she hits an overseer with a stone in defense of a friend. At the colony she is befriended by Gwell Nu, the medic, and discovers that one of her fellow prisoners is Tsorl-U-Tsorl, the once-powerful Deputy of Tsagul, who has been forced out of office on a trumped-up charge of embezzlement. With Gwell's help, the pair escape aboard a garbage raft and make their way to Tsabeggan, "the Nearest Fire," one of the group of volcanic islands in the south, where Tsorl believes a group of offworld strangers--his knowledge of whom amounts to a "state secret," hence the frame--may be found. And so they are, making their surveys of the climate and lifeforms of the planet and worrying over the fate of their missing friend, Scott Gale. Yolo and Tsorl soon make themselves indispensable to the humans, and when the Great Elder Tiath Avran Pentroy attempts to seize them, it's Yolo who plays a major part in helping them to keep their freedom.
Like the previous volume, what makes this one unique and interesting is that it's told from a nonhuman viewpoint, and it's great fun to see how our own kind might look to an alien race (or it to us, especially when exterior sexual characteristics are nearly nonexistent). Yet some things--smiling and laughter particularly--unite them, and Yolo and Tsorl, who've known injustice, are determined not to let the Great Elder use the "threat of change and violence" the Earthlings supposedly bring as a smokescreen to cover his own grasp for greater power. Readers who enjoy well-imagined nonhumans and political maneuverings--including readers of C. J. Cherryh's splendid Chanur series--should give this book an honored spot on their shelves.
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