Foreigner
Foreigner
By Robert J. Sawyer
Tor reprint edition, ISBN 0-765-30972-6
Trade paperback
Many more years have passed since the end of Fossil Hunter. The Quintaglios continue to investigate the alien spacecraft. Meanwhile, Toroca discovers another species of sentient dinosaurs living on the other side of the moon. Afsan has been having strange, unsettling dreams lately and they've been affecting him personally, so he tries a new kind of medicine: the "talking cure."
The third book in the trilogy has the strongest story. (And the Watcher is gone, hooray!) Many of the subplots in book 2 belatedly acquire meaning here, and every new subplot in this book is interesting and memorable.
Toroca's story is the most exciting. The discovery of a new island chain. They refer to the people there as the "Others," and they are friendly, but the Quintaglios are not. Just the sight of one of the Others can send a Quintaglio into dagamant, attacking and killing every Other in sight. It's the ultimate nightmare of first-contact. Fortunately, Toroca does not have this reflex, and he is chosen to be the emissary. Not only does he have to learn a new language, he has to learn their customs and their faith, and he rises to the occasion admirably.
Afsan, however, is deeply disturbed throughout the book. He's about to help change the world again, this time through his psychiatrist, Mokelb. She discovers the truth about Quintaglio civilization. Their own religion has been holding back the development of their civilization.
Robert J. Sawyer's work often has anti-religious overtones. Sometimes he gets carried away with this theme, presenting it in a ham-fisted way instead of making a logical case for it. The Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy cleverly disguises the theme inside another culture. If Sawyer tried to tell this story with humans, it would have been panned as too preachy, but because he wrapped it up in an alien species, it stands on its own without coming across as a science fiction author thumbing his nose at the Church.
It is enormously satisfying to watch the Quintaglios develop as a species, going from renaissance-era technology to space-faring in only a few generations. In fact, the conclusion of the series makes the first two books even more memorable in hindsight because of the new light Foreigner casts on them.
It's as though Sawyer knew the ending the whole time and intentionally wrote the series with a limited perspective just so he could flip our view of this society upside down and shock us with the truth that was right under their snouts. You can take it as an allegory of how unquestioned beliefs can harm a population, or simply accept it as a great series about the ascension of a race of dinosaurs from the dark ages. Either way, it's a satisfying conclusion to a satisfying trilogy.
Review written by James Steele
