Rusalka is a tough slog. I love Cherryh, but I can't recommend it. I didn't get through the second book. The writing style is deliberately opaque in that series.
My favorite Cherryh is the Chanur series. If you're going to read just one Cherryh book, I recommend The Pride of Chanur. It also has the advantage of being short. Of course, if you like that and want to read the rest, the next three books are a trilogy largely in name only—it's basically a long book split into three. Though this is "long" in 1980s paperbacks terms. It doesn't seem long at all nowadays. All 5 Chanur books are available in two omnibuses...which do not keep the middle trilogy in the same volume. Ugh. (The 5th book was written 6 years later and features a secondary but still major character from the first books.)
I also do like her human-centric SF, but some of it can be a bit tough to get through. Downbelow Station was her first Hugo-winner, and it starts with a huge infodump. (I suspect it got added at the publishers' request.) My favorite of this type is probably Tripoint.
I'll probably read the rest of the Foreigner series someday but stopped partway through the 5th book. It's a lot of alien anthropology and politics that I don't get into so much.
Still, I own more Cherryh hardcovers than from any other author.
So anyway, The Pride of Chanur. Read it!