They have no word for trust, and fourteen for betrayal. The 'foreigner' is Bren Cameron, who was used to being quite large on his home planet (Earth) but now among eight-foot-tall [2.5 m] humanoids is beginning to feel a little small. It's not just that: the atevi, who have allowed humans an island enclave in their world and one 'interpreter' or ambassador, called the 'paidhi' - that's Bren - are a feudal people, given to poisoning and double-dealing. They have no nations as overriding loyalties and fealties are the basis of their world. Cameron can't make head or tail of them even though he does his best, for their worldview is not his and maybe he never tries to appreciate that. If humans expect honesty, the atevi expect treachery. When Bren is fed tea by the dowager grandmother of a feudal lord (I almost say 'shogun', I do, but maybe it would be putting too obvious a spin on the story), he ends up in hospital; but was it attempted poisoning, or just something that nobody told the dowager humans couldn't handle?

Naturally Bren gets into more trouble than he should, and like any Cherryh hero undergoes a phase as punchbag, even if it isn't really his fault. As anyone who had read "The Left Hand of Darkness" could have told him, these big inscrutable aliens have their own feuds and Bren's going to be a pawn in some of them. The trouble he gets into is so little his fault - he does so little to bring it about, so much to try to understand even if he can't - that our bewilderment is his. The story is intricate (even if she never points out that the furniture would be huge by his standards) and the decay of Bren Cameron's world a descent into brutality and strangeness, like being caught by bandits in foreign mountains, who might just kill you because as far as they're concerned, you don't matter. Maybe the most alien are those who we think are closest.