Please recommend books in which the heart of the story is the relationship between a human and an alien. I'd like there to be mistrust/misunderstandings at the beginning, which, over the course of the book, turn to mutual respect. In-depth worldbuilding, culture clash etc is all wonderful.
Examples I've enjoyed:
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The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
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The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton
It CAN be romantic, but I've had pretty mixed success when reading science fiction romance books (the only one that really scratched the itch is The Last Hour of Gann)
Thank you!!
by weak-elf
4 Comments
C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series is basically this itch in long form: one human translator/diplomat trying to survive deep culture mismatch with the atevi, and the respect takes real time to earn. It’s slower and more political, but very good if you liked the anthropological side of Le Guin.
*The Road to Roswell* by Connie Willis is about a woman who discovers an alien has come to Earth and the two of them end up having to take a crazy road trip together, initially as enemies but coming to understand each other better. It has some comedic elements (certainly more than *The Left Hand of Darkness* for instance) but it’s not a straightforward comedy.
A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews. It is a romance, but it really checks all your boxes. The FMC was married to an alien, but it all went badly, partly because her husband’s family was ashamed she was a human. He’s now dead, and she has a child that’s half human, half alien, and she is at a crossroads- she doesn’t really fit into human society anymore, her child is too different to try, and she’s falling for another man of the same species, but does not want to make the same mistake.