Umm, it depends? Although CJC's distinctive voice runs through all her books, she has a number of rather different settings.
The problem with/benefit to Foreigner is it's just so HUGE. People either love it and await every volume ago with anticipation (and often buy them in hardcover, even), or they get weary by the end of the first three and wonder why anyone would keep going. (I mean, the fans are so fannish that you can get a fan-produced glossary of the language spoken by the Atevi faction who are Bren's patrons.) Bren really does spend an awful lot of time getting poisoned, beat up, and otherwise injured, for example, which sets up a nice stream of hurt-comfort, but how much a reader will like that really depends on how much that reader likes Bren himself! I was getting pretty much over the series when Cajeiri was introduced as an alternate viewpoint, and that really saved it for me.
Books I've sometimes suggested for new readers would be include:
The Pride of Chanur, which was written as a stand-alone to begin with (the link is to Jo Walton's retrospective writeup on TOR - she did a whole series on CJC's works, and I enjoyed them a lot). In it, the aliens (or at least, one species of them) are the people and the lone human they find is the alien.
Merchanter's Luck, a fast-paced thriller that makes a good introduction to the Company Wars, which are the background for a number of CJC books (they'll show up as a plot point in Cyteen a couple of times, although physically very far off from the planet Cyteen). Boy (sole owner of a very decrepit spaceship) meets girl (younger member of a very wealthy ship-based family) and ends up with her and a few of her cousins on his ship, on a mission that is not what it seems.
Another TOR reviewer, Liz Bourke, just did an article on this very subject: Sleeps With Monsters: Jumping Into C.J. Cherryh’s Alliance-Union Books ("Sleeps with Monsters" is the name of Bourke's blog and of her column on TOR). The comments include some more suggestions of good starting points, beyond Alliance-Union.
(Cherryh has also written fantasy, some of which turns out to kinda-sorta be SF, so some people might want to start there.)
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branchandroot
Where to start with Cherryh
Date: 2020-02-15 02:00 am (UTC)The problem with/benefit to Foreigner is it's just so HUGE. People either love it and await every volume ago with anticipation (and often buy them in hardcover, even), or they get weary by the end of the first three and wonder why anyone would keep going. (I mean, the fans are so fannish that you can get a fan-produced glossary of the language spoken by the Atevi faction who are Bren's patrons.) Bren really does spend an awful lot of time getting poisoned, beat up, and otherwise injured, for example, which sets up a nice stream of hurt-comfort, but how much a reader will like that really depends on how much that reader likes Bren himself! I was getting pretty much over the series when Cajeiri was introduced as an alternate viewpoint, and that really saved it for me.
Books I've sometimes suggested for new readers would be include:
The Pride of Chanur, which was written as a stand-alone to begin with (the link is to Jo Walton's retrospective writeup on TOR - she did a whole series on CJC's works, and I enjoyed them a lot). In it, the aliens (or at least, one species of them) are the people and the lone human they find is the alien.
Merchanter's Luck, a fast-paced thriller that makes a good introduction to the Company Wars, which are the background for a number of CJC books (they'll show up as a plot point in Cyteen a couple of times, although physically very far off from the planet Cyteen). Boy (sole owner of a very decrepit spaceship) meets girl (younger member of a very wealthy ship-based family) and ends up with her and a few of her cousins on his ship, on a mission that is not what it seems.
Another TOR reviewer, Liz Bourke, just did an article on this very subject: Sleeps With Monsters: Jumping Into C.J. Cherryh’s Alliance-Union Books ("Sleeps with Monsters" is the name of Bourke's blog and of her column on TOR). The comments include some more suggestions of good starting points, beyond Alliance-Union.
(Cherryh has also written fantasy, some of which turns out to kinda-sorta be SF, so some people might want to start there.)