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Ahhh, a new CJ Cherryh book; I'm always looking forward to her latest release. In this case Deceiver is Ms. Cherryh's 11th in the Foreigner series. After 11 books in a series one might expect the tempo to become stale, however Ms. Cherryh has kept the series alive nicely.

Deceiver has the feeling and tempo that is reminiscent of an Akira Kurosawa film; the interactions are deep and intricate, the story is moving with action that comes alive in the telling. Ms Cherryh shows the character interactions by having secondary and tertiary character providing insight into the story. In this case, Cajeiri is back to being a secondary character (a senior secondary character since we're still seeing part of the story from his perspective) with good input from Ilisidi and the return of Lord Geigi to "interact" with his nephew Baiji. As always, Bren's staff (Banichi, Jago, Algini, and Tano) is present; and as always they're level of interaction is fairly predictable with Banichi and Jago providing the most insight for the story and Algini and Tano being closer to tertiary characters.

As with any good Kurosawa movie the plot is simple but complicated with its details; Ilisidi and Bren need to stabilize the region before the Marid take it over. This take over was opened up in Conspirator: (Foreigner #10) when we learned Baiji was being maneuvered by the Marid to enable them to take over the region. Now in Deceiver we learn how complex the Marid really is with their internal and external workings. While their external workings were highlighted by their maneuvering of Baiji, their internal workings are brought to the forefront with Barb.

This has been a long running series that I've enjoyed for a number of years. Ms. Cherryh brings to light cultural differences so nicely. The Atevi remind me of the Meiji Dynasty with the Atevi people being very Japanese in their approach to things. In the case of Deceiver the alignment was greater because the storytelling had excellent twist that reminded me of a Kurosawa movie or Shakespearian play (for those familiar with Kurosawa's works, Kurosawa took many of Shakespeare's works and put them into a Japanese perspective. If you're interested I'll recommend Ran, Throne of Blood - Criterion Collection, or Seven Samurai (Criterion Collection Spine #2) to those interested in seeing what I'm talking about). Because of the great storytelling here and especially being as deep as it is into the series I'm calling this one a 5 star book. Btw, I highly suggest that you read the earlier books before reading this one. If you're thinking about taking a shortcut and reading this one on its own, don't worry about things you don't understand, enjoy the story for the story.