From archive (archive) Subject: CUCKOO'S EGG by C. J. Cherryh (mild spoiler) From: duane@anasazi.UUCP Organization: Anasazi, Phoenix Az. Date: 9 Jun 86 08:25:13 SDT The jacket reads, in part: "His name was known throughout the world: Duun, hero, whose scarred face and body represented a dire threat narrowly averted; Duun, hatani, one of those superbly trained individuals revered by all the shonunin as mystic, warrior, guardian and judge. Out of respect and tradition they would refuse him nothing. But in this case, even the few longtime acquaintances who might have been considered friends -- if hatani permitted themselves to form friendships -- would have prefereed to grant almost any other request. Still, they gave him the infant to raise as he wished, and he took the child far away from civilization to Sheon, where he had spent his own childhood. Duun called the boy Thorn, forcing himself to overcome his natural repugnance for the tiny creature's strange, hairless body -- like something freshly skinned; the alien ears and hands and eyes that brought back so many disturbing, painful memories. . . . Thorn grew strong under Duun's careful guidance. At first his education was as basic as any child's. He would run after Duun on short baby legs until, exhausted, he could run no farther.... As years passed the training intensified. The boy learned of weapons and the suffering they could inflict; he learned to hunt, when the alternative was to go hungry; he learned mathematics; and he learned to endure, because Duun would not let him give up. Above all, he learned to be always alert and wary...never to trust anything or anyone. Not even Duun himself." The story takes place on an alien world, and Thorn is the only human. One learns bits and pieces of the culture as the story progresses, but the emphasis is on the relationship between Thorn and Duun. What little technology is revealed doesn't seem to be all that different from our own. Duun's character seems to be drawn from Eastern Zenn warrier philosophers, which is interesting, though not exciting. Since there is not a great deal of dialogue between Thorn and Duun, Thorn's thoughts are very often put in parentheses, something which got to grate on my nerves. There's not much action. The characters are mildly interesting, but I never developed much sympathy for either. The world is mildly interesting, but not a lot was revealed about it. I always felt like an outsider, and the climax took too long to reach and didn't pack the uumph it should have. I give this book 2.5 stars out of 4.0 (it's fair, but I'll definitely trade it in). -- Duane Morse ...!noao!{mot|terak}!anasazi!duane (602) 870-3330 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Feb 24 12:48:25 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!news.funet.fi!funic!fuug!mcsun!uunet!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!raven.alaska.edu!never-reply-to-path-lines From: latour!ve3pak!alayne@ics.uci.edu Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: YVGENIE by C.J. Cherryh Message-ID: <1992Feb20.233235.19715@raven.alaska.edu> Date: 20 Feb 92 23:32:35 GMT Sender: wisner@raven.alaska.edu (Bill Wisner) Organization: University of Alaska Computer Network Lines: 70 Approved: wisner@ims.alaska.edu Yvgenie by C.J. Cherryh reviewed by Alayne McGregor (alayne@ve3pak.ocunix.on.ca) Russian folklore, meet Judy Blume. Let's see who wins. With _Yvgenie_, the third novel in her Russian fantasy series, C.J. Cherryh has moved on to the next generation. Pyetr and Eveshka, hero and heroine of the previous books, now have to deal with the adolescent travails of their 15- year-old daughter Ilyana. And travails they are -- made substantially worse because both Eveshka and Ilyana are wizards, who can make an event happen by simply wanting it. Eveshka is terrified that Ilyana will make the same fatal mistake she did at that age, and tries to protect her from life; Ilyana is lonely and rebellious. And, when Eveshka not only discovers that Ilyana has been meeting a ghost near the river, but also recognizes the ghost, their peaceful world ends abruptly. This is a great opening for a novel, I thought: lots of action, combined with a non-trivial moral problem. How will Cherryh make it work? Unfortunately, she doesn't. The novel _whines_. The dialogue sounds like 20th century adolescent angst, instead of pre- Christian Russians. For example: "'She's doing a lot better,' he [Pyetr] said, struggling for calm. 'Eveshka, listen to me, you've got to give her more room. A lot more, not less. _Trust_ her.'" A Russian father of hundreds of years ago sounding like Alan Alda? The mind boggles. What makes it worse is that it's often difficult to distinguish the voices of the different characters (I do not expect mature male wizards to sound the same as an adolescent girl, but in this novel they often do). The action only starts half-way through the novel, and, when it does, seems contrived: a quest without any strong reason to go. And, without giving anything away, let me say that I was deeply disappointed with the ending, which I found flatly unbelievable and very unsatisfying. This series started out very originally with _Rusalka_. Pity it's going downhill. And, if you haven't read the previous books, don't read _Yvgenie_; it gives away all the endings. A final note: Cherryh might have wanted to include a pronunciation guide at the end of the book, if only to help the hapless staff at my local library. It was amusing, but rather painful, to hear them try to tell me my book was in. %T Yvgenie %A C.J. Cherryh %C New York %D 1991 %I A Del Rey Book published by Ballantine Books %O hardcover, US $19 CDN $25 %G ISBN 0-345-36784-7 %P 280pp From archive (archive) From: elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green) Organization: The Unix(R) Connection BBS, Dallas, Tx Subject: Cyteen, C.J. Cherryh Date: 21 Nov 88 06:33:08 GMT Cyteen: A review ------- - ------ If C.J. Cherryh doesn't place high in the awards with this book, it won't be because it's a bad book. This is one of the better books that I have read recently, and certainly stacks up well against some of the weaker awards winners of the recent past (_Speaker for the Dead_ and _Uplift War_ come to mind, as books that won because they were popular sequels to award winners, not because they were fine literature). One of the advantages of science fiction is that it can be a "literature of ideas". Unlike modern literary fiction, which denies the veracity of reality and says that emotions are the only thing that's "true", science fiction can explore difficult issues in the Real World. In this case, Cherryh tackles the "nature versus nurture" debate in developmental psychology circles, scientific ethics vs. the needs of society, and and even skips around the edges of one of the most difficult questions around: what is Man? And that's only the beginning... this is one of the most idea-chocked pieces of science fiction to hit the presses since the Golden Age came and went. As for the writing, it's Cherryh's usual style, with all its advantages and disadvantages. Cherryh tends to wander between an omniscient 3rd-person narrator and a single personal 3rd-person narrator. She usually ends up painting a pretty good picture of the person whose viewpoint she's writing from, but the supporting cast sometimes come out in various shades of grey. In Cyteen she breaks somewhat from that style, occasionally shifting into the viewpoint of some of her peripheral characters. Still, most of it is told from the viewpoint of the main character, Ariane Emory, and the primary secondary character, Justin Warrick, both Parental Replicants: perfectly cloned genetic copies of their parents, brilliant researchers with serious personality problems. Her characterization holds up quite well considering the immense size of the book, except for at the very end where her uncle Denys acts extremely out of character -- but more on that later. Cyteen is big -- VERY big. My copy is the Science Fiction Book Club edition, 850 pages of small text. It took me 14 hours to read it, and I am a quite fast reader (it takes me maybe 4 hours to snarf down the average 250 page novel). But so is the scope of the book: the attempt to recreate a human being, by duplicating heredity exactly and environment as much as necessary. In this case, it's Ariane Emory who's the subject of the experiment, after her famous predecessor and namesake dies either by accident, by murder, or by suicide (I favor the suicide theory, since she was dying of cancer and wanted to embarrass the person accused of the murder, but we never know exactly what went on down there in that room). At which point comes in "Uncle Denys", who takes over parenting her at age 7, when her surrogate mother is shipped out to the edge of the Union (the original Ariane's mother died at age 7). The original Ariane, too, was given over to an uncle, but there's one critical difference between the original Ariene's uncle and Denys: Denys doesn't sexually abuse his charge. Add in that the ORIGINAL Ariene is still in the picture, through the miracles of computer files left to her replicant in hopes of saving her from the original's mistakes, and what comes out is a very brilliant, reasonably sane young woman, with all the brilliance but few of the personality problems of her namesake. She still is troubled, at times (who of us aren't), especially by loneliness, but she can cope: she doesn't descend to the warped sexual fantasy and abuse of her predecessor. What Cherryh seems to be saying is this: suffering is necessary, to reach your potential. Without suffering of some sort, there's no reason to perform to the ultimate of your ability. But, too much pain and suffering can warp a person, and if the person simply is not strong enough, can break her. It's a bleak philosophy. Alas, if you look at the ranks of the most brilliant people of yesteryear, it suddenly doesn't seem so unlikely. At which point we get to Denys, and where he acts out of character: At the end of the book, he tries to kill her. It's not TOO unexpected... Denys, intentionally or unintentionally, came perilously close to sabotaging the project by being too soft on little Ari. Still, he's a rather sedentary person, very intellectual, very warped, and it's simply out of character for him to order a direct assasination of the girl who lived with him for 5 years. Denys struck me as the sort of person who'd put arsenic in your porridge, or flood your room with poison gas, not the kind who'd resort to weapons... weapons are so... unsubtle. Final ratings: Characterization: above average Content: Much above average. Style: average Entertainment index: above average Overall: above average. Note that I'm fairly difficult to please... I haven't rated many other book I've read this year as "above average"... Cherryh's other book _The Palladin_ comes to mind (alas, it, too, suffers from a bad ending... of Cherryh's recent books, the only one I can think of that had a decent ending was the Chanur series). Why this book won't win a Nebula: It's not "literary" enough... everybody knows that Nebulae are awarded for style, not content. Why it won't win a Hugo: Hugos are popularity contests. Cyteen has the potential to be a very popular book... huge blockbusters seem to be especially common lately, and Cyteen avoids the primary error of most of them (huge casts of supporting characters, so lightly sketched that all of their names and jobs could be interchanged without the reader being able to tell the difference). Unfortunately, distribution is going to be a BIG problem... the Science Fiction Book Club printed Cyteen in small type, on larger-than-paperback pages, and it's still more than 800 pages. It most probably will have to be split in two to be put into paperback... will the publisher do it, and will booksellers stock it? Only time will tell... in the meantime, it seems unlikely that it will attain the popularity to win a Hugo in its year of publication. Should you go out and buy it? It depends. Do you have a month to spare, or read fast enough to devour it in one gulp over a weekend? Can you keep your attention on one book for 16 hours worth of reading? (big question... even I started wandering, occasionally, towards the end). Do you want to join the SF Book Club, or buy it in hardcover? If the answer is "Yes" to all of the above, then buy it. If your idea of literature is the Xanth series and Alan Dean Foster, don't bother. -- Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 From archive (archive) Subject: THE KIF STRIKE BACK by C. J. Cherryh (mild spoiler) The jacket reads: "Chanur's Revenge. Kif Power. Hani Pride... When the kif seized Hilfy and Tully, hani and human crew of "The Pride of Chanur", they issued a challenge Pyanfar, captain of "Pride", couldn't ignore, a challenge that was to take Pyanfar and her shipmates to Mkks station and into a deadly confrontation between kif, hani, mahendo'sat, and human. And what began as a simple rescue attempt soon blossomed into a dangerous game of interstellar politics, where today's ally could become tomorrow's executioner, and where methane breathers became volatile wild cards playing for stakes no oxy breather could even begin to understand..." Sound confusing? It is, even if you've read CHANUR'S VENTURE, the book that precedes this one. It is sometimes the case that the middle book of a trilogy is weak, and this book is very weak. The action takes place over the course of a handful of days, and during the entire time the crew is exhausted. Midway through the book the reader is exhausted too. The dialogue is very often in broken English; this is done to indicate that the speaker doesn't fluently speakthe hearer's language (which isn't English anyway), but it grates on one's nerves after a while. The story is very hard to follow. I had read the first book of the series and also THE PRIDE OF CHANUR, which deals with some of the same characters but is not directly involved with the trilogy, and I still had lots of problems trying to figure out the politics. There's no preface or afterword that summarizes what has happened up to this point, so if you haven't read CHANUR'S VENTURE, this book will thoroughly confuse you. There are other problems with the story too. There's a lot of posturing and verbal confrontation, but very little real action until the end. And some of the conflicts, between Hilfy and Pyanfar, for instance, repeat themselves a number of times and are never resolved. I hate it when one of my favorite authors writes a dull book, but I can only give this book 2.0 stars (fair). -- Duane Morse ...!noao!terak!anasazi!duane (602) 870-3330 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Jun 10 12:41:06 1993 Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!pipex!uknet!doc.ic.ac.uk!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!wupost!usc!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!rochester!news.crd.ge.com!sunblossom!knight.vf.ge.com!news.ge.com!psinntp!psinntp!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: ccc_rex@waikato.ac.nz (Rex Croft) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: "Hellburner" by C.J. Cherryh Message-ID: <739585134@sheol.UUCP> Date: 8 Jun 93 21:23:02 GMT Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand Lines: 46 Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) "Hellburner" by C.J. Cherryh - reviewed by Rex Croft ccc_rex@waikato.ac.nz This book is the sequel to "Heavy Time". I recommend that you read "Heavy Time" before this novel. I had, but had forgotten most of it, and realised the lack. The novel starts with Ben Pollard being transferred to the orbital Sol II battle station to help the pilot Paul Dekker who is in hospital recovering from an attempt on his life. Sol II is a joint effort to develop a warship capable of flying at a significant fraction of the speed of light and attacking enemy objects travelling at a similar speed. _Hellburner_ is the name of the warship. One had just crashed in testing, heightening the pressure. The first half of the novel is slow, with the intrigues and tensions between the different groups being described. Then the action picks up and up until there is a climatic finish. There isn't much to the plot, but it is the way Cherryh builds the tension that makes the book. As well as reading "Heavy Time" you may wish to read "Cyteen" since "Hellburner" refers to the azi and Cyteen. PS: I chose this book from my pile of about 30 unread SF and fantasy books because I had just read "McLendron's Syndrome" (see previous review) and wanted to clear the bad taste out of my mouth (or mind). And I really like Cherryh's Chanur series and buy all her work. %A C.J. Cherryh %T Hellburner %I Questar (Warner Books) %C New York %D June 1993 %O paperback, US$5.50 %P 393 pp. %G ISBN 0-446-36451-7 %S Sequel to "Heavy Time" %V 2 %O Cover design by Don Puckey, cover illustration by Don Maitz, hand lettering by Richard Nebiolo From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Dec 5 21:47:44 1993 Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!uunet!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: DOWNBELOW STATION, by C.J. Cherryh Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9312012040.AA11723@gw.PacBell.COM> Date: 03 Dec 93 01:19:23 GMT Lines: 186 DOWNBELOW STATION, by C.J. Cherryh A much-belated review Copyright 1993 Dan'l Danehy-Oakes There ought to be a law, or at least some kind of rule, preferably one put up in big neon letters in the offices of editors of major science fiction lines, which would require them to force authors *NOT* to begin any novel with an expository lump ten pages or more in length, a perfect case in point being C.J. Cherryh's Hugo-winning 1981 novel DOWNBELOW STATION, of which I snarfed a book club edition way back when it first came out, which copy I tried several times, unsuccessfully, to read, first when I got it, and then when it was nominated for the Hugo, and again when it _won_ the Hugo, but I frankly hadn't looked at it again from then until a few weeks ago, when CJC and Jane Fancher blew into "The Other Change of Hobbit," and I picked up a paperback copy on a whim -- my hardcover being inaccessible for the nonce -- casually mentioning my nonsuccess at reading it and generally feeling like a fool for buying a second copy, a feeling reinforced by my wife, who told me that if I was buying a second copy of the same book I damn well *better* read it; so I forced myself to get through the seemingly-interminable "the story so far" first chapter which insists on recapping the entire history of humans in space from shortly after my grandchildren will be born until the mid-24th century (and without a single *mention* of the USS Enterprise, I might add, so what kind of 23d century could Cherryh possibly be have in mind, anyway?) when the events of DOWNBELOW take place, then continued on into chapter two where the book actually *starts*, and you know what, it's actually a pretty damn good book, one which, if not unputdownable, at least was sufficiently involving to keep me from reading very much else (I typically have five to ten books going at once) until I finished it, convinced by this and the "Chanur" books that CJC is quite possibly the finest writer of straight-ahead space opera going today (the only other possible contender being Samuel R. Delany, and while many of his books are indeed space-operatic in nature, it's pretty damn hard to call any of them except maybe possibly kinda sorta NOVA straight-ahead space opera), and immediately cussed myself out for not having picked up a copy of SERPENT'S REACH. Which only goes to show, doesn't it? Spoilers and detailed commentary follow the break, followed by the usual bibliographic blah. Cherryh's approach to space opera is refreshing. She doesn't focus on the heroics, but on the political side of events, and particularly on the effects of all this world-smashing and such upon all the people who have to live their lives on the worlds being smashed and such. Her greatest weakness, on the other hand, is the creation of really _alien_ aliens. The "Chanur" books, for all their niftiness, do not succeed in convincing me that the Hani are anything but humans in cat suits; the same for the Kif and the other oxygen-breathers of Compact space. . . and this is _particularly_ true of the hisa of DOWNBELOW STATION. Each of Cherryh's alien races has a few quirks which make them "different" from humans, but are otherwise humans in funny suits. These quirks amount to the "funny hat" or "spit-and-clap-your-hands" school of characterization, blown up to the species level. You are probably familiar with this from bad pulp fiction; a character is given a funny hat to wear, or a few mannerisms, or a special word or phrase that he (it's always he; the women in this type of fiction are even less differentiated) uses far more than any real person ever uses a catch- phrase. "Well, I'll be superamalgamated!" "Jumping Galaxies!" "Great Horny- Toads!" and so on. So similarly with Cherryh's hisa, hani, and other aliens: they are given a few behavioral "tags" by which a given species can be recognized, and are otherwise human. Hell, humans from different cultures on Earth have a wider range of thought and behavior than this; a hisa or a hani could easily be a human from an obscure Earth culture. Now, I want to make it clear that this is not a Cherryh-specific problem; it's common to most modern space opera, and a lot of non-space-operatic SF, too. STAR TREK is perhaps the worst offender, though the STAR WARS flicks come pretty close and would be worse if there were more of them, I'm sure. These products also universally fall prey to the idea that an entire world is somehow homogeneous; this is where you get your Empires where everyone speaks a single language and behaves more-or-less alike; this is where you get your desert planets and your forest planets and your planets of diplomats and for all I know a planet full of elves making toys. Space opera generally fails to grasp the concept that a world is a big complex place, a species is not generally homogenous, and a stellar empire will be much more complex and much more heterogeneous. And the non-alien "alien" is a particularly distressing flaw in a writer who is otherwise so good at creating a complex, textured future world. . . and even more so in a writer who seems (see for example the "matrix"-thinking methane- breathers of Compact space) to be aware that aliens ought to be _alien_ in their thought patterns. Now, Cherryh -- to return specifically to DOWNBELOW STATION -- has set herself a significant problem; she sets several chapters in the point-of-view of her hisa characters. She's limited to the English language, which is clearly designed to express human concepts, in conveying their POV to the readers. But it can be done. The classic example, of course, is Terry Carr's "The Dance of the Changer and the Three," which features the point-of-view of an alien who is about as alien as you could ask, and does so in perfectly reasonable English. The hisa, by contrast, are -- again -- humans in funny suits. Physically, they are larger versions of Piper's "fuzzies"; mentally/culturally/sociologically, they're a fairly generic culture of primitive pacifists confronted with a war- like technological society. Perhaps they're a bit more pacifistic than any real human culture. . . but not so much so that anything in their behavior requires them to be alien. There's a classic rule that if the story could have been told without its stfnal elements, it probably shouldn't have been written as SF in the first place. The same, I suggest is true of aliens: if they could just as well have been human, they probably should have been. What, then, does their presence contribute to DOWNBELOW STATION? Their primary story functions are: 1) To be frightened a lot 2) To lead humans through places they are familiar with but humans aren't 3) To be innocent victims that make all the violence look bad 4) To be something 'precious' that the (human) good guys don't want to see destroyed (1) and (3) are variations on a theme. Cherryh's human characters are generally so hard-bitten that the horrific nature of what they're doing to each other tends to get lost in the shuffle. She *needs* innocents to keep this alive -- and, as I said above, the effect of all this world-smashing on the "little guy" is one of her strongest suits. The hisa are the ultimate "little guy." But making them cute and furry is a manipulative tactic, akin to Orson Scott Card's cynical use of children in his novels, giving unearned credence to their innocence and emotional buy-in, equally unearned, to their peril. A harder but more honest solution to the problem would have been to establish some human characters -- not total innocents like children or hisa, but "good folk," colonists who have nothing to do with the battle of Company and Union. Such people could also have filled function (2) fairly well. Function (4) is another manipulative tactic. To have the "good guys" go around beating their breasts about how this wonderful uniqueness must not be lost does very little for the plot but a great deal for establishing that they are in fact the good guys. In fact, you can pretty much deal the characters in DOWNBELOW STATION into two piles, labeled "good guys" and "bad guys," solely upon the basis of their attitudes toward the hisa. The only real exceptions are the characters deep into Union who have no opportunity to express any attitude toward the hisa -- and they, oddly enough, are also the only characters who by novel's end are still morally ambiguous, i.e., not clearly definable as "good guys" or "bad guys." The problem with this tactic is, of course, that the hisa are not in fact anything particularly unique. Their innocence may be unique in the "sophisticated" future universe of DOWNBELOW STATION (has anyone ever noticed that Cherryh's novels have this in common with the "cyberpunk" movement that came to prominence at around the same time she became a superstar?), but it's hardly a characteristic inaccessible to humans. Returning to Cherryh's strong points: plotting. After the initial expository lump, she manages to pull off the double-hat-trick of plotting: everything that happens seems inevitable once you find out about it, but you expect almost none of it. The only significant plot twist that failed to come as a surprise to me, at least, was Signy Mallory's ultimate defection, and even that came about in a way and at a time that was both logical and surprising. Cherryh also does something guaranteed to frustrate some readers -- almost all of her world-smashing takes place off-stage. The action of DOWNBELOW STATION encompasses several significant space battles; of these, only one takes place on-stage. This takes guts to attempt and increased tautness in suspense elsewhere to pull off -- and Cherryh pulls it off marvellously. Looking back from the distance of a dozen years, I can honestly say that DOWNBELOW STATION was indeed Hugo material. It may not be one of the great SF novels of all time, but it is a major achievement from a talented writer, and certainly one of the better SF novels of the 1980s. %A Cherryh, C.J. %T DOWNBELOW STATION %I DAW Science Fiction %C New York %D 1981 %G ISBN 0-88677-431-4 %O paperback, US $4.99 --Dan'l, hard snargling fooby burble bletch. Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: dani@telerama.lm.com (Dani Zweig) Subject: Cherryh: Foreigner Message-ID: <3clqnm$sm7-repost@asia.lm.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Organization: Telerama Public Access Internet, Pittsburgh, PA USA Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 02:57:42 GMT Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Lines: 53 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:703 rec.arts.sf.written:85344 C.J. Cherryh's "Foreigner" is subtitled "A novel of first contact." Humans have lived alongside the Atevi for centuries (involuntarily, after their ship went astray), and they're still at the first-contact stage, trying to understand them. The two species have a great deal in common, but some key concepts simply will not translate. Atevi cannot comprehend what it is to 'like' someone, for instance, and Humans keep coming up with mistranslations of "man'chi". (Atevi form interlocking associations, rather than nations, but define themselves, as individuals, by their choice of an over-riding loyalty.) These misunderstandings led to war in the past past (the Humans lost, and negotiated a prolonged and orderly transmission of their technology), and threaten to do so again. Cherryh has carved herself a recognizable niche through her portrayals of alien species trying to get along, trying to understand each other, and often settling for some degree of mutual accomodation. Her Chanur novels, for example, are set in a Compact of space-faring species, some of which can barely communicate with others, and they combine interesting stories with thought-provoking backgrounds. In "Foreigner", Cherryh focuses upon the problem of understanding the alien at the expense of the story, and it doesn't work very well. In the main, we get over three hundred pages of Bren Cameron - the Human liason - and his guards stepping on each others' sensibilities. The problem itself isn't that interesting, either: The source of the friction between Atevi and Humans is not so much their inability to understand each other as the insistance of each on relating to the other as they would to members of their own species. Whereas a Hani would say "I don't understand them, but I can trade with them, and if things blow up I'll duck", Cameron wants the Atevi to *like* him. I didn't enjoy "Foreigner". The story, such as it is, consists of a not-very-interesting character trying to cope with a situation he doesn't understand, and to deal with issues that Cherryh's handled in more interesting ways in other novels. %A Cherryh, C.J. %T Foreigner %I DAW %C New York %D February, 1994 %G ISBN 0-88677-590-6 %P 378 pp. %O $20 ----- Dani Zweig dani@telerama.lm.com 'T is with our judgements as our watches, none Go alike, yet each believes his own --Alexander Pope Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!pipex!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: cash@convex.convex.com (Peter Cash) Subject: Review of TRIPOINT, by C.J. Cherryh Message-ID: <3en63j$ej9@icarus.convex.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Summary: Wait for the paperback Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Organization: The Instrumentality Date: Sun, 8 Jan 1995 04:58:17 GMT Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Lines: 124 DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES OF THE SPACEWAYS A review of C.J. Cherryh's TRIPOINT, by Peter T. Cash ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Spoiler warning: I don't think reading this can possibly spoil the book, but you may disagree. So let the reader beware. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRIPOINT is a novel populated by the usual Cherryh characters: the neurotic, the psychically maimed, the persecuted, and the paranoid. In some of Cherryh's novels, this works very well--CYTEEN is a case in point. I can't think of a single character in CYTEEN I would want to have dinner with (unless I could bring my own comestibles and otherwise secure myself against drugging or other skulduggery), but all the same, CYTEEN was a powerful and captivating novel. That's because this novel has so many interesting ideas--reading CYTEEN will change the way you think about cloning, genetic manipulation, human rights, and freedom of the will. I'm not saying you'll change your opinions on these subjects--but you'll have re-examined them, at least. CYTEEN also has Ariane Emory, evil mistress of the webs of deceit. In her more malevolent incarnation, Ariane is fascintatingly evil; her actions are callous, manipulative and abhorrent--but there is fascination in the sheer magnificence of her depravity. In her more benign incarnation, Ariane is a sympathetic character caught in the tangles of her own machinations, and that of her conniving former associates. (You'll have to read CYTEEN to understand what I mean.) But TRIPOINT is not anything like CYTEEN. The C.J. Cherryh novel that TRIPOINT reminded of most is MERCHANTER'S LUCK. Less ambitious than CYTEEN, MERCHANTER'S LUCK is a love story of sorts: two people who have good reason to distrust one another find themselves inextricably bound in a common venture that will fail unless they do learn to trust. Cherryh succeeds in making the characters in MERCHANTER'S LUCK real, and I found myself caring about what happens to them. We know that the two protagonists _ought_ to trust one another, and we know why they can't, and we very much want them to break through the barrier that keeps them apart. Like MERCHANTER'S LUCK, TRIPOINT is a story of relationships that is played out mostly on ships and stations. In this case, however, the characters aren't two potential lovers who may (or may not) be able to enter a relationship with each other, but a twisted sort of family that would be much better off if they'd never met. Tom Bowe-Hawkins is the son of Austin Bowe and Marie Hawkins. We cannot, however, speak of a "love child" here--Tom was begotten by rape. (At least Marie says it was rape--Austin apparently has his own view on the matter, and we never really learn the truth). Marie, for reasons of her own, decides not to abort Tom--a fact she never ceases to throw in his face. She is a manipulative and rather cranky mother who does some twisted things to her son. To spare the details, Tom is convinced that sex is pretty much rape (when he makes love he constantly asks his partner, "Did that hurt?"), he's a classical Oedipal case, and he's sure that Austin Bowe is the devil incarnate. Given this psychological preconditioning, it's no wonder that Tom is quite distraught to find himself shangaied aboard his father's ship. Of course, no one--least of all his father or the brother he didn't know he had--wants Tom aboard; his shangai-ing was all a mistake, it seems. Evidently, this was intended by Cherryh to be a very intense situation--the prodigal son returns to find himself clapped in the brig of his father's ship and universally distrusted and despised. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work out that way; the situation is merely uncomfortable instead of nasty for Tom, and consequently the novel never reaches the heights of drama at which Cherryh aimed. The trouble is that Tom's family isn't really all that evil--they're just kind of irritable because people have been mean to them. We're supposed to think (at least at first) that the crew of Bowe's ship are nothing but pirates, and that Austin Bowe himself is probably the chief pirate who cuts throats just for the exercise. However, their actions never let this illusion take hold--the worst that happens to poor Tom when he awakens in the ship's brig is that his brother jerks his chain a bit--literally. Austin Bowe does a lot of grumpy posturing, but he never really looks like he's going to do Tom serious damage. Probably the worst thing that happens to Tom is that he's raped by the ship's navigator, a gorgeous woman who apparently gets bored during those long hyperspace jumps. (This is bad, you say?) For evil to be interesting, it must be dramatic and not banal. Minor evil is boring--and I'm afraid that's all we have in TRIPOINT. There's no one in this book who compares to Ariane Emory in CYTEEN, and Tom's mother is certainly no Signy Mallory. There are also no new ideas in TRIPOINT. All the props of Cherryh's universe are there--the ships and space stations she does so well, the renegade Fleet, the trading ships. But we don't learn any more about Cherryh's universe from TRIPOINT, any more than we examine interesting ideas, as in CYTEEN. The only element that might have saved TRIPOINT is characters we can care about--then it would have been a sucessful "people" novel (like MERCHANTER'S LUCK), rather than a novel of ideas like CYTEEN. Alas, not a single one of the characters is one I would like to have lunch with. This is not because I would be afraid they'd poison me, but because I'm certain that they would be quite rude and most likely boring. Thus, I don't really care when it turns out, for example, that Tom's relationship with his brother and father improve marginally at the end of the book. I have to say that TRIPOINT _is_ tautly written--it does keep you turning the pages. If this is all you ask of a book, then by all means read it. But wait for the paperback. Cherryh can do much better than this. I note with alarm that she's lately been turning out some fairly pedestrian novels (FOREIGNER, HEAVY TIME, and HELLBURNER come to mind), and it may be that she needs to take a break and recharge her creative cells. It may also be that she's burned out on the Company Wars universe; if so, she ought to ignore the pleas of her fans and write no more of them. %A Cherryh, C. J. %T Tripoint %I Warner Books, Inc. %C New York, N.Y. %D 1994 %G ISBN 0-446-51780-1 %P 377pp -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist. | Peter Cash | (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein) |cash@convex.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.kth.se!nac.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!uhog.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!nobody From: "Bruce J. Gaede" Subject: Review of INVADER by C. J. Cherryh Message-ID: <01HPZFBGLS0UA2A4LW@PPDMR.Abbott.Com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 17:09:51 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 72 INVADER by C.J. Cherryh A Review by Bruce Gaede If one had to choose the one aspect of C. J. Cherryh's science fiction as her most highly developed skill, it would have to be her masterful creation of alien beings and their societies. The hani of the _Chanur_ stories, the merchante and stationer societies of the Union-Alliance novels, the list goes on and on across over 50 published novels. Cherryh's latest creation, the atevi, introduced last year in _Foreigner_, are the subject of her latest work in what promises to be a new series, _Invader_. _Invader_ takes up the story of Bren Cameron, the human _paidhi_, or "translator", who serves to communicate and keep the peace between a small group of humans who somewhat inadvertently found themselves on the world of the atevi, and their humanoid but definitely alien hosts. The starship which abandoned the humans 178 years before returned at the end of _Foreigner_, precipitating a crisis among both humans and atevi. _Invader_ takes up events at the end of the first book and carries them forward. In the course of the narrative we learn much more about the atevi. Cherryh is clearly more comfortable with her creation in this second book and provides us with fascinating insights into a fully-formed alien society. The insights are largely sociological, political, and linguistic rather than technological, although there is plenty of tension throughout and the story builds to a climax with plenty of action to keep you up late. We also get to know Bren Cameron much more thoroughly. Unlike some of Cherryh's male characters Bren is a basically a healthy and well-adjusted individual. He makes plenty of mistakes, but he deals with them and goes on. He is a well-prepared, experienced professional who responds as well as anyone could to events which are always somewhat out of his control. Cherryh uses this device in almost all of her books; we reveal ourselves best when we have to deal with the unusual and unexpected, and the measure of a person is how he or she responds. In the different responses of humans and aliens we gain insight by contrast into what it means to be human. This, IMHO, is what is most valuable about science fiction. Although the arrival of a starship obviously provides plenty of tension for both human and atevi governments, Bren's personal life is also in turmoil, providing an interesting foil to the larger events of the story. In the course of the story Bren becomes estranged from his girlfriend, Barb, and his family, and a disturbing encounter with Jago, one of his security guards, adds a new dimension to the mix. The cover art by Michael Whelan is, if anything, better than that of _Foreigner_. The artist, and designer Miles Long, are setting a new standard not just for the artistic quality of cover art but for how it enhances the reader's enjoyment of the story. Whereas _Foreigner_ stood alone as a novel (although most C. J. Cherryh fans that I know hoped for a sequel), _Invader_ is clearly now part of a series. The action reaches a stopping place on the last page, but all is by no means resolved. We will have to wait for further books in this series to find out what happens next. At the rate Cherryh produces books (three this year!) we have high hopes that it will not be a long wait. %A Cherryh, C. J. %T Invader %I DAW %C New York %D May 1995 %G ISBN 0-88677-638-4 %P 422 pp. %O Hardback, US$19.95 %O Cover art by Michael Whelan -- --Alan Wexelblat, Reality Hacker, Author, and Cyberspace Bard MIT Media Lab - Intelligent Agents Group finger(1) for PGP key Voice: 617-253-9833 Pager: 617-945-1842 wex@media.mit.edu http://wex.www.media.mit.edu/people/wex/ "Are we fugitives from the law?" "Yes." "Idiocy is our only option." Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!trane.uninett.no!due.unit.no!nac.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!news.sprintlink.net!simtel!news.kei.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news!nobody From: cash@convex.convex.com (Peter Cash) Subject: INVADER, by C.J. Cherryh Message-ID: <3ssqpd$kiq@icarus.convex.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Summary: buy Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: The Instrumentality Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 01:34:05 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 79 INVADER, by C.J. Cherryh A book review by Peter Cash For some reason, I didn't expect Cherryh's FOREIGNER to have a sequel. True, it had an unsatisfactory ending, but Cherryh often writes what I consider to be unsatisfactory endings, so I simply counted the ending as a flaw in the book. This probably colored my whole judgment of the book--though it was reasonably well-done, I didn't like FOREIGNER a whole lot. It seemed like a minor--and perhaps pointless--departure for Cherryh. (One might remark that if the publisher had been honest, and warned us that FOREIGNER is the first of a series, my judgment would probably have been more charitable.) Reading her sequel, INVADER, has totally reversed my view: I now think that this series shows promise of being among the best things Cherryh has ever done--maybe even almost as good as CYTEEN. The major reason for my reversal is that I've been taken with Cherryh's description of the Atevi--the alien society in which a relatively small group of humans is marooned. In INVADER, Cherryh adds a good deal of depth to her description of these alien people. For example, she makes clearer the grounds for their fascination with numbers, and the nature of _man'chi_ is further elaborated. This concept-- _man'chi_ -- is loosely translated as "association" (though it has no counterpart in any human language), and is the bond that holds Atevi society together. They need some sort of social glue, since the Atevi have no understanding of "liking" another person (telling an Ateva that you like him translates something like, "I would like to eat you for dessert"), and no concept of friendship. I think this is surely one of the best descriptions of a truly alien society in the science fiction genre. The chief human protagonist, Bren Cameron, is the "paidhi"--a translator/ ambassador--sent from the human settlement to keep the peace with the Atevi. Bren must constantly be watchful, lest he anthropomorphosize the Atevi, and think (mistakenly) that they "like" him, or are grateful to him for things he has done for them. Naturally, this is hard on him. Like any Cherryh hero, Bren spends a good deal of his time being mystified, harried, and confused. (In this book he has a recently broken shoulder that he's constantly whining about; I doubt if it'll ever heal, since his massive 9-foot bodyguards regularly leap on top of him to shield him from assassin's fire.) However, unlike some Cherryh protagonists, Bren is a reasonably respectable and likeable human being, and one wishes him well. INVADER is written in Cherryh's usual breathless, ungrammatical stream- of-consciousness style. It's not pretty, but it works--as intended, the reader's eyes are pulled along, devouring the text without noticing the words, eager to find out what happens next. One does wish that Cherryh was more parsimonious with the introspective angst-filled soliloquies that pad INVADER. Yes, the book would be thinner--but nothing significant would be left out. Peculiarly, there is no indication in INVADER whether Cherryh intends to continue this series. One hopes so--but then again, maybe she will just leave us in the lurch, with nothing resolved. Surely the cat is out of the bag with this second book--would it really have killed the people at DAW to clue us in on what the plans are for the continuation of these books? Courtesy seems to be a rare thing in the publishing industry. Oh yes, I have one other gripe. I think it's forgiveable if a writer doesn't know the difference between the use of the words "principle" and "principal"--but if a _proofreader_ doesn't know the difference, then it's a much grimmer matter. I noted several instances in INVADER where "principle" is used as an adjective (e.g., "His principle protector"). When I pay $19.95 for a book, I expect better. In case you missed it amid my griping, I highly recommend these two books -- even in hardback. %T Invader %A C.J. Cherryh %C New York, N.Y. %D 1995 %I Daw Books %O hardback, US $19.95 %G ISBN 0-88677-638-4 %P 426 pp | Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist. | Peter Cash | (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein) |cash@convex.com Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!fizban.solace.mh.se!eru.mt.luth.se!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news!nobody From: "Stephen M.G. Hodge" Subject: Review: TRIPOINT by C.J.Cherryh Message-ID: <646130150wnr@sloth.demon.co.uk> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author= Stephen M.G. Hodge Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Reply-To: hoj@sloth.demon.co.uk Organization: None Date: Mon, 6 Nov 1995 19:38:05 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 54 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:862 rec.arts.books.reviews:986 TRIPOINT by C.J.Cherryh Warner, ISBN 0-446-51780-1, 1994, 374pp, UKP15.50 A book review by Steve Hodge (hoj@sloth.demon.co.uk) I do not generally buy hard back sf, preferring to save my money and wait for the paper back version, so when I found myself at the till with a copy of C.J. Cherryh's Tri-point in my hand I felt a bit like a nicotine addict in the tobacconist. There is every chance, I told myself that you won't enjoy this as much as you think you are goingto, and it is costing you more money than it ought. I yield to no-one in my admiration for, indeed addiction to, most of the Cherryh canon, but even her greatest fan would have to admit that a few of the novels have lacked freshness and been a trifle formulaic. To anyone who shares these feelings, I can report that they need have no concerns about Tripoint. It is a story set in the milieu of merchanters and star stations like Downbelow Station & Merchanters Luck, but with a fresh cast of characters, who since they are mostly merchanters have a lot in common with Sandor and Alison Reilly, but are still new and interesting. Like her best stories the plot rattles along, working on a number of different levels with the technology nicely worked into the action. The story concerns the working out of a decades long feud between the merchanters Corinthian and Sprite which started when a one night stand between two young crew members went wrong on Mariner station, and finishes in almost space opera style at Tripoint, a jump point between Pell and Viking where anything can and does hide. Cherryh uses the book to develop the social dynamics and to a lesser extent the economics of a merchanter society. Merchanters are star ships trading between star station, the ship supporting a full population of men women and children. Their journeys run into months and years of elapsed time, but because of time dilation effects, far longer as time runs for the stations. The result is that the only social continuity for the merchanters lies with other merchanters whom they can only meet when in dock on the stations, or passing each other at dark, and dangerous in the aftermath of war, jump points between the stations. Cherryh is unsurpassed among current sf writers at following through the implications of such a scenario, but as good a job as she does with the merchanters I find it hard, as yet, to see the system she describes as a sustainable one in social and economic terms. However there is a hint at the end of the story that we shall see more of the principal characters in some future novel. If so it I am very much looking forward to it. %A Cherryh C.J %T Tripoint %C New York %D 1994 %G ISBN 0-446-51780-1 %I Warner Books Inc %O Hard back UK Sterling 15.95 %P 377 Pages -- Stephen MG Hodge Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.ida.liu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news.net.uni-c.dk!howland.erols.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: "Aaron M. Renn" Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Subject: Review: The Faded Sun Trilogy by C. J. Cherryh Organization: GNU's Not Unix! Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 12 Apr 2000 17:17:58 -0400 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Lines: 68 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 955574280 21253 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2681 The Faded Sun Trilogy, C. J. Cherryh Review Copyright (c) 2000 Aaron M. Renn Conclusion: Worth Reading This trilogy works well as an omnibus novel. The three books tell a single tale with really no logical break between them, something I imagine annoyed people at the time. Lucky for me they were all here in one volume for my enjoyment. Sometime in the far future humanity had a war with a species called the regul. These regual didn't deign to fight themselves, but rather hired a warlike species called the mri to fight for them. These mri have a rigid caste society and very strict moral code. This code included taking no prisoners in battle, something that you can image pissed off the humans quite a bit. But the mri also seemed to believe in honorable single combat to settle differences, something the humans didn't exactly go for. The end result being that after a pretty nasty war the mri were nearly wiped out and the regul decided to cut their losses, negotiating a treaty that ceded most of the disputed worlds to the humans. As the humans come to claim the world of Kesrith, homebase of the mri, an officer named Sten Duncan ends up fleeing from a last minute regul betrayal with a mri warrior named Nium. Duncan and the remants of the mri set out on a quest to save the mri race. The story was interesting, though really didn't grab me. The cultures were well done. Cherryh does a good job of building mostly believable aliens. She also manages to portray both humanity and the regul in a fairly impartial manner, showing both their strengths and weaknesses, good side and bad. Less successful were the mri. I personally think we were supposed to view them just a little to sympathetically. They pretty much screwed themselves over through their inability to adapt their moral code to the realities of the modern universe. Unfortunately, the alternative to mri success is mri extinction, something most of us clearly would not be comfortable with no matter what its evolutionary correctness. Quite frankly, the mri annoyed me all around. I didn't like them and I didn't like their moral code. If Cherryh intended this, then maybe she did do a good job of pulling off the balanced portrayal, but something in the back of my mind says she didn't. Reading these three books in one volume manages to showcase their excessive length. While none of the individual books is long, together they take too many pages. This story would have been improved by writing it as a single 450 page novel. Also, I have a few nitpicks, such as mri separated in space for thousands of years being able to completely understand each other, with no noticeable linguistic or cultural differences. And the ending was disappointingly standard. I basically predicted its outline near the end of the second book. I'm glad I read this, but it certainly isn't in the required reading category for SF fans. %A Cherryh, C. J. %T The Faded Sun Trilogy %I Daw %D 2000-01 %G ISBN 0-88677-869-7 %P 775 pp. %O mass market paperback, US$7.99 Reviewed on 2000-04-07 -- Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/