Resurgence

I have now read, all for the first time, the 20 books in C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner sequence. It's a series about a continuously-negotiated co-existence between the descendents of a lost Earth colony ship and the inhabitants of the alien planet on which they landed; intensely interesting, with an intricate alien culture and lots of political strategy and maneuvering.

Books 8, 9, 10, and 11 each cover a span of 3-4 days -- and yet there's no padding in them, they're pretty much continual action, much of it edge-of-the-seat. Later books tend to contain an early chunk of "previously, on..." which seems a bit redundant to someone who's read the novels one after another, but is probably quite welcome as a refresher to readers for whom the previous novel was a year or more prior.

Book 17, Visitor, is an absolute corker, probably the standout of the lot to my mind. And I thought that each of the novels makes a reasonably satisfying complete story, with the exception of this last one, Resurgence, which definitely ends in an unresolved cliffhanger (so series fans who haven't read it yet may want to wait until Book 21 is out).

This is definitely going on my Hugo Best Series ballot next year.