R- "Foreigner" series (v,b), Fortress in the Eye of Time (v,b), "Cyteen" series (v,x,b), Tripoint (v,x,b), 40,000 in Gehenna (x,v,some b)
PG16- Heavy Time (v,x), Hellburner (v), Downbelow Station (v,b), Rimrunners (v,x), "Faded Sun" trilogy (some v,b)
PG13- Finity's End (v), Merchanter's Luck (some v,slight x)
My first exposure to Cherryh was through Fortress in the Eye of Time, an intense book about identity and power, magic and rebirth. It was incredible, but difficult going, even for me. I think that's true of many of Cherryh's novels. She is one of the best authors I have ever read, but she can be hard to get used to. Once you pick up her style, though, it becomes easier and easier with each successive book.
The best place to start would probably be with her Cyteen/Pell/Earth Wars books (except "Cyteen" itself, which is wonderful but dense on the first reading). The ones I found reasonably simple include Merchanter's Luck, Finity's End, Rimrunners, Heavy Time, and Hellburner. The first three are about life in the Alliance side of her world, and the last two are set before the war, back in the asteroid belt around Sol. Most of these books are independent of one another, except for the "Cyteen" trilogy and "Hellburner", which is a sequel to "Heavy Time". Another in the series is Downbelow Station, which is more in-depth than the others except for Cyteen.
Fortress in the Eye of Time is from the point of view of a man born of fire and shadow. He was created fully adult by a man some consider to be the greatest mage who ever lived- and certainly the greatest one still living. The boy-man knew almost nothing about life, and could not understand what he was supposed to do. The wizard was the only human he knew, and the fortress in which he was born was the only place he had ever lived. Yet he was born for a destiny, as the screaming faces frozen in the walls of the fortress told him. He was to be something, to do something, that only the old mage could fathom.
Intensely psychological (and very long...), this novel was well worth my time, but it was hard to read. Younger readers should probably avoid it until they are older so they don't get a bad taste in their mouths. Also, parts of the story were quite frightening or gory, and the world in which it is set is highly political and dangerously unstable. The novel shares many themes with the "Cyteen" trilogy, but just because you've read one doesn't mean you shouldn't bother with the other. It just means that whether or not you liked one of them should help you decide whether or not to read the other.
The Faded Sun trilogy is one of Cherryh's earlier works, but well worth picking up if you can find it. It's a prime example of her ability to produce alien races with truly alien thought processes and demonstrate the sort of conflicts of understanding that appear when you mix them together. You probably could read each book in the trilogy on its own, because the important points of the plot for the sequels are mentioned in each, but you would miss out on the intricate development of those points and how the characters got to the beginning of each story, never mind the exploration of the natures of humanity, regul, and mri which Cherryh does so well. Warning: Because of the time lapses between novels, it is necessary to explain what happens at the end of each story to give you an idea of the plot of the next, so if you don't want it spoiled avoid the second and third reviews until you've read the books before them.
The Faded Sun: Kesrith begins at the end of the 43-year long war of humans against mri, an alien race which has been hired mercenaries for the alien regul for over 2,000 years. The humans have won because the merchant regul decided that there was no more profit in the war and left their mri fighters to be slaughtered. Regul adults are almost completely sedentary, and have eidetic memories which make it nearly impossible for them to imagine future possibilities: if they haven't experienced it before, they are uncertain about what to do. This makes it hard for them to deal with either the humans or the mri, although for years they have dealt with the mri simply by giving them orders and not trying to understand them too well. The regul bring a small human embassy (a military specialist in alien worlds, Sten Duncan, and the next governor of the planet, Stavros) to Kesrith, the current mri homeworld, to settle the peace agreements and cede the world to humans. They neglected to mention this plan to the mri, and the mri of the sadly diminished edun (something like a palace/fortress in which mri live) suddenly find all their plans changing when they find out what's happening and the regul start panicking.
The Faded Sun: Shon'jir follows the two last mri (Niun and Melein) and Duncan, who have survived the regul's attempts to obliterate them and are now fleeing through space following a navigational record that's far more than millenia old. The regul and human military forces are of course right behind them, but Duncan was released to go with the mri by Stavros, who knew that he would be changed by the experience. And changed he is - this book is about his struggle to understand the mri and become, in thought and manner, word and deed, one of them. This is a sort of religious pilgrimage for the mri, and they won't allow anything tsi'mri - non-mri or alien - to be with them at the end. It is also the development of the mystery of the mri's nature, and their history - are they really the completely fearless and conscienceless killers that the rest of the universe thinks they are? What is their purpose, that their leader had been pushing them towards even on Kesrith?
The Faded Sun: Kutath is the end of the flight, the mri homeworld, where Niun and Melein discover they are not the last of their species after all. But the mri may become extinct in short order, because the regul ship and three human ones following Duncan's are horrified by the trail of dead worlds that they followed to get to Kutath and what this means about the mri's nature. Meanwhile, Melein must gather the scattered tribes and finish what she started with this journey while Duncan desperately tries to stop a war while still keeping true to the mri nature he now has. I changed my mind about what the mri really were at least twice through the course of this book, and was certainly surprised (and satisfied) by the final revelation, as well as by the understanding of the regul.
Other works of Cherryh's I liked include the Foreigner-Invader-Inheritor series about the future of the human race on a particular planet. A colony ship of humans went off course hundreds of years ago, and it finally found its way to a habitable planet. Due to ship-board politics, some humans land on the planet to contact the natives, and others leave. There is a battle between the humans and the natives, known as Atevi, and the result is that only one human is allowed on the mainland continent. That human is Bren. The story really starts with an assassination attempt on Bren, after which he is plunged deep into the heart of Atevi politics, an alien politics with alien values that he must learn to call his own or die. Intense and mind-expanding, this is a series that makes use of every word and every nuance in the English language, and it even had me using some Atevi words long after I put it down. Definitely a winner.
The premise of this world is that space travel changed humanity forever. Those who lived on stations evolved not only different physical attributes which were advantageous, but also different social ones. Beginning with Sol Station itself, humankind began to branch outward into more possibilities. Then they discovered Pell, a world with life on it, though no breathable atmosphere. Then came Cyteen, a world that could be terraformed for humans. But these were very far away from Earth, and they could not be controlled. Life in Union, the entity centered around Cyteen, became incomprehensible to blue-skyers, those from Earth. And life on the huge family ships that ran the routes between them changed it yet more ways, until a spacer and a stationer had little in common. Finally, there were the Azi, humans created from genome sets, grown in labs, and programmed with biofeedback and tapes to perform a multitude of jobs and to fill the population void in Union.
Cherryh traces the evolution of this world from the first true spacers, the miners in the asteroid belts and the "Shepherds" who sent the mined ore home, to the Fleet from Earth, a piratical military intended to stop Union from becoming independent, to the family ships whose politics were all-important to the future of Pell, to the continuing evolution of Cyteen itself and the stations which look to it or to Pell for their survival. Incredibly interwoven, this world is one of the most believable futures I've ever read. As one of my friends said about "Cyteen" (which could be applied to the whole series), you aren't meant to like what happens in the book; you're meant to feel strongly about the characters (even if your feelings are complex), and to be fascinated by the intricately woven story. Warm fuzzies aren't part of the deal.
"On desperate ground, fight" goes the Chinese proverb. "On desperate ground, go nuts" counters Cherryh. Heavy Time is about a young man named Dekker who was trapped in a ship for days by himself and barely survived. Because he has information about the government, they have every reason to keep him insane and unreliable, but there are other forces that want what he knows. Thus, he becomes a pawn between competing political forces, and even his friends aren't sure how much they can trust him- or how much he can trust them. This story is fast-paced but leaves you in the dark for most of the novel. The limited third person omniscient point of view helps the reader realize that the question of Dekker's sanity is a thin line in a world most of us would consider crazy to begin with. The tone is dark and often desperate, but the clash of cultures is subtly, beautifully revealed in the microcosm of five people who don't know whether they should care about each other or not.
Hellburner is about the production of the Earth Fleet. Once again, Dekker the genius pilot gets into something over his head, and he has another breakdown. When his semi-reluctant friends come to the rescue, they find politics within the Fleet pulling at Dek from all sides, until there may be nothing left of him. Meanwhile, he still has to pilot the prototype of the rider ships, which become part of the Fleet superiority later in the War. But who is piloting him? A large portion of this book is from the point of view of Ben, the most cynical of Dekker's friends. The absence of Bird as character balance shows, and the novel doesn't seem as strong as the first, though it's still very good. The culture clash, however, mostly disappears into the general aura of hope versus dispair. These two books are for those of you who love psychologically screwed up characters.
The Merchanter novels explore different aspects of what it means to survive in the aftermath of the War, on the edges of space, not knowing if you can trust anyone. Merchanter's Luck is about a man who is the last of his family on a small, dying ship. He meets a young scion of the O'Reilly family, from the great ship Dublin Again. She doesn't want to wait for 50 years to get a decent posting on her overcrowded ship. Thrown together after a sleepover, they choose to take their chances with a tiny ship that's barely legal. Not quite trusting each other, but with no other choice, they begin a desperate trip during a dangerous time, when Mazziani pirates are everywhere and Mallory the defector is watching every ship's movements in order to catch those who trade with the outlawed Fleet.
Finity's End starts at the very end of the War, when the great ship Finity's End (so old that it's patch is a simple black circle) returns to Pell. They left a pregnant woman there, years ago, and now they've come back for her surviving son. But he is a stationer born, if not bred, and he doesn't want to go. Thrown into a family he doesn't know, treated like a spacer child when he's almost a stationer adult, the boy tries to find some common ground with his strange family, or at least some way to survive them for a while.
Rimrunners stars a former weapons tech from Africa, a Fleet ship run by Porey, the most notorious captain aside from Mazzian himself. But the tech is stranded on a dying station, trying desperately to get work on some ship that might eventually get her into contact with her own people. But instead she ends up on a ship that runs the borders of legality, possibly under control of Mallory, Porey's #1 enemy. Not only that, but she finds herself entangled in relationships with people in a power struggle for control of the ship, and she's on the losing side...
Tripoint is the most intensive Merchanter novel I've read. It stars the desperately confused Tom Hawkins of Sprite, a medium-sized and prosperous Union-side family ship. But Tom is not quite a Hawkins; he is the rape-born child of Marie Hawkins and Austin Bowe, now captain of the Corinthian, a ship long suspected of trading with the Mazziani. Tom has inherited his mother's instability, his father's temper, and some desperate need for someone around him to care but no faith that any one of them will. He then snoops in the wrong place, trying to save his mother, and gets shanghaied aboard Corinthian, to meet the other half of his family: a half brother who hates him, a father who beats on him, a distant cousin who pities him, and his brother's apparently insane girlfriend. Will he ever see Sprite or Marie again? Will he even survive the ship? And what is going on inside his head that makes the jumps so bad?
Next, the award-winning Downbelow Station chronicles the race for survival of a vast number of people in the midst of the War, as the Fleet destroys stations and refugees flee to Pell, the last safe harbor. Ancient family lineages are destroyed with a single blast, an entire section of Pell is given over to complete anarchy, and Union and Earth seem hell-bent on dividing up the Merchanters between themselves. Yet there is tension in the ranks of Fleet, and Union has lost stations as well. Even the Downers themselves join in this struggle for the survival of one of the three living worlds known to humanity. But survival is not always an option.
Cherryh simply is one of the best at describing contact between humans and incomprehensibly un-human alien societies. In 40,000 in Gehenna, she reaches yet another level- describing a society that does not use words to communicate. The 200-year integration of the original Azi colonists into Caliban society on Gehenna is both disturbing and fascinating, drawing on some of human-kinds deepest collective fears about itself and others to create a blend of disturbance and desperate attachment. The original Jin and Pia are strongly sympathetic and heart-wrenching at times. Unfortunately, due to the epic nature of the work, most characters last no more than 100 pages, if that, and sometimes there was no particular character in which I was interested. However, a willingness to read through to the last 75 pages or so will be rewarded by the completion of the circle and the creation of a new pattern for the Gehennan's and the universe of Union-Alliance as they make more and more first contacts with alien intelligences. An excellent book in places, a little slow in others, but definitely far above average.
Finally, the incredible "Cyteen" series is a must-read for all psychology and politics lovers. Composed of the three books Betrayal, Rebirth, and Vindication, this series explores the death and rebirth of one of Union's most influential women, Ari of Reseune, a woman of unparalleled skill in creating genetic and tape combinations for Azi, the humans that are born out of vats and spend their early lives learning from tape, pre-programmed to be perfect for their jobs. The world inside Reseune laboratories is a deeply troubled one of family intrigue and deadly minds, where geniuses match wits in a race for survival. Caught up in it is one pitiful boy, Justin, living a life someone else planned for him, dreaming of the day he can escape this nightmare.... All I can say is, if you can stand the length and the complexity, read this book. You will never think quite the same again. The emotional violence is unsettling, but the plot/character combination is powerful enough to put your brain on overdrive, like a serious version of Illuminatus!
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