March to Other Worlds Day 11: Morgaine by C.J. Cherryh

Day 11 Morgaine by C. J. Cherryh

In the Morgaine series, C. J. Cherryh’s heroes literally travel to a new world in each novel, bringing pain and destruction to the inhabitants in their efforts to stop a large catastrophe striking all of human space. Like the Chronicles of Amber, I got the opening trilogy to this series as part of my initial membership in the Science Fiction Book Club. As I recall my mother had to sign off on my joining because of my age and she wasn’t happy about it, but she did it for me. (Thanks, Mom!) I stayed in the SFBC for the next ten or twelve years and bought hundreds of books from them, but those first ones stand out in my memory: A Heinlein Trio, The Chronicles of Amber, Riddle of Stars, and The Book of Morgaine. Each was at least a trilogy because I wanted to get my money’s worth, and oh did I get it. That was the single best dollar I have ever spent in my life!

 

Over the last four decades I’ve read dozens of Cherryh’s books and decided on Gate of Ivrel and its sequels for this event because they fit the theme so well. This is the story of the enigmatic, Morgaine, a cursed woman out of legend, and Vanye, who becomes bonded to her and her mission to save humanity by closing down a series of gates that can transport people through space and time. These gates offer the potential of great power, but they also have the potential to destroy civilizations if someone uses them to tinker with the past. A human civilization sent a company of soldiers through the gates to close them one after the other until there are no more. (So it’s a suicide mission because they will only discover that there are no more when they don’t come out the other side of the last gate.) Morgaine is the last (and possibly not the first generation) of those soldiers and her tale is amazing in no small part because the Gates offer power and the possibility of immortality and many fight her in her efforts to close them down.

 

Cherryh tells Morgaine’s story through the eyes of Vanye, the bravest man in literature who was ever condemned for cowardice. He is the epitome of honor and we watch him be tricked into serving Morgaine whom he loathes and fears as a witch who got ten thousand men killed a century earlier. Over the course of the book he grows to understand just how selfless and heroic his lady truly is. In doing so we watch him navigate a world in which none of his peers (save one) lives up to the ideals that he embodies. Cherryh’s greatest strength as an author has always been her ability to portray new and distinctive cultures in great detail but without exhausting the reader through long and tedious descriptions. Vanye is one of her better tools for accomplishing this. We learn about his people by contrasting his actions and motivations with those of everyone he encounters. I love this series and I bet you will too.

So if you're interested in amazing sf that reads like fantasy, why not drop over to my Facebook page and join in the discussion of Morgaine: https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...