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Alliance-Union Universe
Brothers of Earth
The sole survivor of a spaceship battle, Kurt Morgan's survival capsule finds an Earth-type planet in this unknown system. Stranded for life, he must adapt quickly to the strange terrain and even stranger inhabitants or face extinction. But would it be possible for him to learn the ways of this totally alien culture & to entirely adapt his human reactions to their fabulous civilization and complex mores? Kurt didn't know it yet, but before long he would be completely enveloped by this alien race and become the key figure in their great civil wars. And it would take all of Kurt's brave determination and keen resources just to keep himself alive.
282 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
4 people are currently reading
571 people want to read
About the author
C.J. Cherryh
292 books3,561 followersCurrently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J. Cherryh has won four Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. She is the author of more than forty novels. Her hobbies include travel, photography, reef culture, Mariners baseball, and, a late passion, figure skating: she intends to compete in the adult USFSA track. She began with the modest ambition to learn to skate backwards and now is working on jumps. She sketches, occasionally, cooks fairly well, and hates house work; she loves the outdoors, animals wild and tame, is a hobbyist geologist, adores dinosaurs, and has academic specialties in Roman constitutional law and bronze age Greek ethnography. She has written science fiction since she was ten, spent ten years of her life teaching Latin and Ancient History on the high school level, before retiring to full time writing, and now does not have enough hours in the day to pursue all her interests. Her studies include planetary geology, weather systems, and natural and man-made catastrophes, civilizations, and cosmology…in fact, there's very little that doesn't interest her. A loom is gathering dust and needs rethreading, a wooden ship model awaits construction, and the cats demand their own time much more urgently. She works constantly, researches mostly on the internet, and has books stacked up and waiting to be written.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
July 31, 2016
Ya me explayaré cuando pille un teclado.
Resumo: 5 estrellas TENIENDO EN CUENTA QUE ES DEL 76.
O sea, que me ha gustado mucho sabiendo que es CF clásica con todos sus defectos (personajes flojitos, inocencia en los giros argumentales y todo eso) y virtudes ( mundos, viajes, culturas extrañas, perjuicios extrapola les, amores de risa)
Admito que Cherry era/es uno de mis iconos en CF. Y que no soy imparcial. Pero la mantengo las 5 estrellitas, hale!!
Resumo: 5 estrellas TENIENDO EN CUENTA QUE ES DEL 76.
O sea, que me ha gustado mucho sabiendo que es CF clásica con todos sus defectos (personajes flojitos, inocencia en los giros argumentales y todo eso) y virtudes ( mundos, viajes, culturas extrañas, perjuicios extrapola les, amores de risa)
Admito que Cherry era/es uno de mis iconos en CF. Y que no soy imparcial. Pero la mantengo las 5 estrellitas, hale!!
June 1, 2017
A re-read of a book first read years ago and which I must have enjoyed as I kept it; unfortunately, I'm not rating it a keeper this time around. I found the pace very slow and the main character interaction unconvincing.
Kurt Morgan is a human who crashlands on a planet where a humanoid race called the nemet live. He is from one side in a long war with another human civilisation, both in the process of destroying themselves. At first, the nemet are hostile to him, and some of them remain so, because they fought a war some generations ago against humans from the enemy side who invaded and tried to take over. The survivors of these humans are now barbarous cannibals and the nemet expect Kurt to be the same, though some of them gradually come to accept him, at least partially. The prime mover among them is K'ta, son of a ruling family of one of the two nemet cities. Despite Kurt's punching him in the face early on in an attempt to escape, K'ta bends over backwards to befriend him and treats it as a debt of honour. Unfortunately for him, this debt brings one after another in a series of disasters that befalls K'ta's family.
Meanwhile, Kurt discovers that the ruler of the city to which he has been taken is a human woman, Djan, one of the enemies he has been fighting all his adult life. They come to a wary truce and she allows K'ta's family to take Kurt in and teach him nemet ways, but later comes to regret it. Kurt falls for a nemet woman in his adoptive household and is the cause of a conflict between the ruling families and other nemet who are from a different religious heritage and who were the original rulers of the city and its surrounding lands. The ruling families came from the other nemet city overseas generations ago, so they are suspected of having divided loyalties. This underlying tension eventually leads to major conflict.
One aspect which I suppose added to the interest of the story at the time of publication is that the nemet are superficially based on the ancient Japanese: at least, they have tea ceremonies, are warriors with revered weapons, worship their ancestors and have a very controlled and non emotional social standard. Kurt struggles greatly with this and is always offending against it because he is too touchy-feely or free with his gaze.
I found the story unconvincing because I couldn't accept that the nemet would make a human woman, from a race which they regard as animalistic, into an all powerful ruler. I also found K'ta's forbearance with Kurt as excessive given the disasters that befall his family and friends due to Kurt's presence. Kurt's sentimental courtship of a nemet woman doesn't convince either when - off camera - he is also having an affair with Djan. And the latter's relationship with Kurt doesn't convince; there isn't any real connection between them, especially since she is simultaneously having an affair with a nemet from one of the underdog families. In fact the whole thing between Kurt and Djan was so low-key, I didn't realise they were meant to be having an affair until it was mentioned later by the characters. My basic problem with the book as a whole was that I didn't find any of the characters believable in their motivations and there was no real characterisation/emotional realism, as well as the slow pacing. So for me, only a 2 star rating.
Kurt Morgan is a human who crashlands on a planet where a humanoid race called the nemet live. He is from one side in a long war with another human civilisation, both in the process of destroying themselves. At first, the nemet are hostile to him, and some of them remain so, because they fought a war some generations ago against humans from the enemy side who invaded and tried to take over. The survivors of these humans are now barbarous cannibals and the nemet expect Kurt to be the same, though some of them gradually come to accept him, at least partially. The prime mover among them is K'ta, son of a ruling family of one of the two nemet cities. Despite Kurt's punching him in the face early on in an attempt to escape, K'ta bends over backwards to befriend him and treats it as a debt of honour. Unfortunately for him, this debt brings one after another in a series of disasters that befalls K'ta's family.
Meanwhile, Kurt discovers that the ruler of the city to which he has been taken is a human woman, Djan, one of the enemies he has been fighting all his adult life. They come to a wary truce and she allows K'ta's family to take Kurt in and teach him nemet ways, but later comes to regret it. Kurt falls for a nemet woman in his adoptive household and is the cause of a conflict between the ruling families and other nemet who are from a different religious heritage and who were the original rulers of the city and its surrounding lands. The ruling families came from the other nemet city overseas generations ago, so they are suspected of having divided loyalties. This underlying tension eventually leads to major conflict.
One aspect which I suppose added to the interest of the story at the time of publication is that the nemet are superficially based on the ancient Japanese: at least, they have tea ceremonies, are warriors with revered weapons, worship their ancestors and have a very controlled and non emotional social standard. Kurt struggles greatly with this and is always offending against it because he is too touchy-feely or free with his gaze.
I found the story unconvincing because I couldn't accept that the nemet would make a human woman, from a race which they regard as animalistic, into an all powerful ruler. I also found K'ta's forbearance with Kurt as excessive given the disasters that befall his family and friends due to Kurt's presence. Kurt's sentimental courtship of a nemet woman doesn't convince either when - off camera - he is also having an affair with Djan. And the latter's relationship with Kurt doesn't convince; there isn't any real connection between them, especially since she is simultaneously having an affair with a nemet from one of the underdog families. In fact the whole thing between Kurt and Djan was so low-key, I didn't realise they were meant to be having an affair until it was mentioned later by the characters. My basic problem with the book as a whole was that I didn't find any of the characters believable in their motivations and there was no real characterisation/emotional realism, as well as the slow pacing. So for me, only a 2 star rating.
January 11, 2014
Way back in the 70's I tried to read some fantasy book by CJC and gave up, considering it peurile. I was 15 and my god was J.G. Ballard.
Much later, after the English New Wave (sadly) waned in influence and SF retreated into its clique, I discovered the Chanur/Hani books and was filled with a new delight over space opera. And after that - a long time after - I found this 1976 novel and read it during an evening of insomnia.
It's good. Not great, but certainly good. The seeds of her wonderful alien/human/various spceies thing is there, and the book is writ with an economy of style and narrative which I find pleasing. Something which the likes of Peter Hamilton and Dan Simmons seem to have lost sight of.
The ending is rather weak, but this is a respectable SF novel from an author who would shortly go on to greater things.
Recommended 6.5/10
Much later, after the English New Wave (sadly) waned in influence and SF retreated into its clique, I discovered the Chanur/Hani books and was filled with a new delight over space opera. And after that - a long time after - I found this 1976 novel and read it during an evening of insomnia.
It's good. Not great, but certainly good. The seeds of her wonderful alien/human/various spceies thing is there, and the book is writ with an economy of style and narrative which I find pleasing. Something which the likes of Peter Hamilton and Dan Simmons seem to have lost sight of.
The ending is rather weak, but this is a respectable SF novel from an author who would shortly go on to greater things.
Recommended 6.5/10
July 3, 2017
This is, according to the introduction, one of Cherryh’s very first books, and it shows (though not entirely in a bad way: the other book that Cherryh mentions as among her first is “Gate of Ivrel”, which is more successful in good part because it is less ambitious). Part of the problem is that the scenario of a lone human in an alien society is one that she would return to often, and with better results than here. The nemet, with their honor-based culture that seems like ancient Rome with a dash of medieval Japan, are similarly more like a rough draft for better-thought-out alien species that would appear in later books, with more intricate and alien belief systems. Otherwise, Djan’s presence in the book, a major plot point, just doesn’t make much sense: it’s never clear how she came to be Methi (Queen, sort of, though it’s never quite clear how much power Djan really wields) or what she is trying to accomplish, other than to make Kurt Morgan, our hero, miserable. Kurt himself is not particularly memorable, and neither is Kta, his nemet friend. And it was, I think, a mistake to make the nemet so humanoid that Kurt and Mim could fall in love: it makes it hard to believe that Kurt really has so much trouble understanding them, and vice versa, which is probably why Cherryh disposes of Mim early.
Still, there are two good, if underdeveloped, ideas here. First, there is the question of how a society with what it fully believes to be a complete description of the universe, a total cosmogony that explains every feature of the natural world and their place in it, responds when presented with walking, talking proof that their description is incomplete. The medieval Catholics, to take one example of such a culture, had centuries to adjust to the slow accumulation of proofs, and even then the church didn’t officially accept that, for instance, the earth orbited the sun until 1835 (when Galileo and Copernicus were removed from the church’s Index of Forbidden Books). The Indras nemet are given no such time: instead, they have suddenly found aliens — who they were not only unaware of, but should not and indeed, according to their most cherished beliefs, cannot exist — in their midst, claiming to be thinking and feeling beings. It’s no surprise that this generates not just philosophical questions but religious uproar and political disturbance, and Cherryh’s treatment of these is fairly acute: unfortunately, she doesn’t spend much time with this aspect of the story.
The other interesting and underused side of the story is the character of Bel t’Osanef, who requires a bit of background. Nephane, the city where Kurt is taken, turns out to be a colony, in which a small (I think, though the relative proportions are never really made clear) group of Indras nemet, originally from the city/empire (again, it’s not entirely clear) of Indresul, rules over the indigenes, known as Sufaki. Bel is one of the few assimilated Sufaki, a member of one of the three Sufaki noble families who are treated as being on the same level as Indras. He is, in fact, Kta’s brother-in-law. But he is also very conscious of still being in many ways an outsider to the Indras, even to Kta, and of the more serious slights, not to mention outright discrimination and historical injustices, still suffered by his fellow Sufaki. Cherryh gives him a couple of heartfelt and eloquent speeches about his position: his confrontation with Kta, after Kta returns to Nephane having done exactly what the Sufaki radicals who want to throw the Indras out had always claimed they would do, namely agreeing to surrender the city to the invading forces of Indresul — they have good excuses, mostly having to do with Indresul’s superior force, but the betrayal is acute nonetheless — is particularly poignant. Intelligent and highly perceptive, perhaps due to the way that he is caught between two (metaphorical, it has to be said, since this is sci-fi) worlds, Bel is a far more interesting character than either Kta or Kurt. Indeed, in some ways he obviates the need for Kurt, as the divide between Sufaki and Indras is more important, and seems harder to bridge, than the one between human and nemet.
And Cherryh is extremely sharp on the colonizer-colonized dynamics between the Indras and the Sufaki, dynamics that make the relationship between Bel and Kta deeper and more nuanced than that between Kta and Kurt. That Kta and Kurt should have trouble understanding each other is unsurprising, given that Kurt has only just arrived on Kta’s planet; that Kurt should work harder to understand Kta than vice versa is also logical, given that Kurt will be spending the rest of his life living among the nemet. That Bel should understand Kta far better than Kta understands Bel, even though the two of them grew up together, is far less obvious, and sheds far more light on the Indras-Sufaki relationship than Kta and Kurt’s struggles for mutual understanding do on the differences between humans and nemet. It also changes the way we see Kta, who is no longer merely a stoic hero with an interesting if archaic system of honor. Instead, he becomes a well-meaning but flawed man (or rather, nemet) who is trapped in a worldview that always, even subconsciously, puts Indras above Sufaki. He disapproves of anti-Sufaki slights, but not enough to remonstrate publicly with the slighter; he is glad that the Jim Crow-esque system of anti-Sufaki laws that was in place until a few decades ago was dismantled (in an ironic reversal of a classic sci-fi trope, the nemet of Nephane were brought together by a human invasion), but fails to see that the entrenched advantages produced by centuries of Indras rule constitute a de facto system of discrimination on their own; and he sees no problem with the way that Nephane continues to largely be ruled by the same Indras families as before. In short, he has what might be described as the classic “1950s white moderate” worldview, combined with the absolute self-belief of a hereditary aristocrat. But Cherryh shies away from forcing him to confront the consequences of this worldview, and indeed from following her whole setup to its logical conclusion. The more we learn about Nephane, the more we sympathize with the Sufaki, so Cherryh makes their religion scary and their leader unlikeable, as well as having some of them rape Mim after they kidnap Kurt, said kidnapping having, it is strongly insinuated, been carried out solely due to their leader Shan t'Tefur’s jealousy of Kurt as a male of Djan’s species (Shan is Djan’s lover). Even so, the reader is hard-pressed to applaud when the final result of Indresul’s invasion of Nephane seems to be that Kta has bargained the Methi of Indresul down from a genocide of the Sufaki to merely restoring some version of the old system. But Cherryh doesn’t want to think about it that way, so she waves her hands a bunch and has Kurt tell Bel that it’s better to live on your knees than die on your feet, which, though perhaps true, is extremely weak tea. The ending leaves you feeling a bit wistful for a different and more interesting book in which Bel, who presumably has some sympathy for an outsider trying to adjust to Indras society, befriends Kurt as well, forcing Kurt, and so the book, to address some of the contradictions of Indresul society more directly. (It would also have a bigger role for Aimu, whose interesting position as Kta’s sister and Bel’s wife is almost entirely unaddressed.) Cherryh’s inability or unwillingness to follow through on the interesting ideas she comes up with is what, in the end, marks this as a first effort.
Still, there are two good, if underdeveloped, ideas here. First, there is the question of how a society with what it fully believes to be a complete description of the universe, a total cosmogony that explains every feature of the natural world and their place in it, responds when presented with walking, talking proof that their description is incomplete. The medieval Catholics, to take one example of such a culture, had centuries to adjust to the slow accumulation of proofs, and even then the church didn’t officially accept that, for instance, the earth orbited the sun until 1835 (when Galileo and Copernicus were removed from the church’s Index of Forbidden Books). The Indras nemet are given no such time: instead, they have suddenly found aliens — who they were not only unaware of, but should not and indeed, according to their most cherished beliefs, cannot exist — in their midst, claiming to be thinking and feeling beings. It’s no surprise that this generates not just philosophical questions but religious uproar and political disturbance, and Cherryh’s treatment of these is fairly acute: unfortunately, she doesn’t spend much time with this aspect of the story.
The other interesting and underused side of the story is the character of Bel t’Osanef, who requires a bit of background. Nephane, the city where Kurt is taken, turns out to be a colony, in which a small (I think, though the relative proportions are never really made clear) group of Indras nemet, originally from the city/empire (again, it’s not entirely clear) of Indresul, rules over the indigenes, known as Sufaki. Bel is one of the few assimilated Sufaki, a member of one of the three Sufaki noble families who are treated as being on the same level as Indras. He is, in fact, Kta’s brother-in-law. But he is also very conscious of still being in many ways an outsider to the Indras, even to Kta, and of the more serious slights, not to mention outright discrimination and historical injustices, still suffered by his fellow Sufaki. Cherryh gives him a couple of heartfelt and eloquent speeches about his position: his confrontation with Kta, after Kta returns to Nephane having done exactly what the Sufaki radicals who want to throw the Indras out had always claimed they would do, namely agreeing to surrender the city to the invading forces of Indresul — they have good excuses, mostly having to do with Indresul’s superior force, but the betrayal is acute nonetheless — is particularly poignant. Intelligent and highly perceptive, perhaps due to the way that he is caught between two (metaphorical, it has to be said, since this is sci-fi) worlds, Bel is a far more interesting character than either Kta or Kurt. Indeed, in some ways he obviates the need for Kurt, as the divide between Sufaki and Indras is more important, and seems harder to bridge, than the one between human and nemet.
And Cherryh is extremely sharp on the colonizer-colonized dynamics between the Indras and the Sufaki, dynamics that make the relationship between Bel and Kta deeper and more nuanced than that between Kta and Kurt. That Kta and Kurt should have trouble understanding each other is unsurprising, given that Kurt has only just arrived on Kta’s planet; that Kurt should work harder to understand Kta than vice versa is also logical, given that Kurt will be spending the rest of his life living among the nemet. That Bel should understand Kta far better than Kta understands Bel, even though the two of them grew up together, is far less obvious, and sheds far more light on the Indras-Sufaki relationship than Kta and Kurt’s struggles for mutual understanding do on the differences between humans and nemet. It also changes the way we see Kta, who is no longer merely a stoic hero with an interesting if archaic system of honor. Instead, he becomes a well-meaning but flawed man (or rather, nemet) who is trapped in a worldview that always, even subconsciously, puts Indras above Sufaki. He disapproves of anti-Sufaki slights, but not enough to remonstrate publicly with the slighter; he is glad that the Jim Crow-esque system of anti-Sufaki laws that was in place until a few decades ago was dismantled (in an ironic reversal of a classic sci-fi trope, the nemet of Nephane were brought together by a human invasion), but fails to see that the entrenched advantages produced by centuries of Indras rule constitute a de facto system of discrimination on their own; and he sees no problem with the way that Nephane continues to largely be ruled by the same Indras families as before. In short, he has what might be described as the classic “1950s white moderate” worldview, combined with the absolute self-belief of a hereditary aristocrat. But Cherryh shies away from forcing him to confront the consequences of this worldview, and indeed from following her whole setup to its logical conclusion. The more we learn about Nephane, the more we sympathize with the Sufaki, so Cherryh makes their religion scary and their leader unlikeable, as well as having some of them rape Mim after they kidnap Kurt, said kidnapping having, it is strongly insinuated, been carried out solely due to their leader Shan t'Tefur’s jealousy of Kurt as a male of Djan’s species (Shan is Djan’s lover). Even so, the reader is hard-pressed to applaud when the final result of Indresul’s invasion of Nephane seems to be that Kta has bargained the Methi of Indresul down from a genocide of the Sufaki to merely restoring some version of the old system. But Cherryh doesn’t want to think about it that way, so she waves her hands a bunch and has Kurt tell Bel that it’s better to live on your knees than die on your feet, which, though perhaps true, is extremely weak tea. The ending leaves you feeling a bit wistful for a different and more interesting book in which Bel, who presumably has some sympathy for an outsider trying to adjust to Indras society, befriends Kurt as well, forcing Kurt, and so the book, to address some of the contradictions of Indresul society more directly. (It would also have a bigger role for Aimu, whose interesting position as Kta’s sister and Bel’s wife is almost entirely unaddressed.) Cherryh’s inability or unwillingness to follow through on the interesting ideas she comes up with is what, in the end, marks this as a first effort.
April 29, 2025
Another very early Cherryh -- I believe this was only her second novel. It's ostensibly another Alliance-Union novel, but it's set so far down the timeline (and who knows whether the timeline even existed when she was writing it) that it doesn't really matter; it's effectively a standalone.
So the story begins in the final moments of a space battle that may be the final moments of an interstellar war that has been waged for over two thousand years between two human factions -- the Alliance (the only quasi-explicit connection to the larger Alliance-Union setting, as far as I noticed) and the Hanan (about whom we learn practically nothing). The two contending ships destroy each other, leaving just one survivor, one Kurt Morgan, in an escape capsule. Fortunately, he's able to land on an inhabited planet in the system, home to the almost-but-not-quite-human race the nemet. Kurt is rescuted by one of the nemet, Kta by name, and taken back Kta's city, Nephane, which is, in fact, currently ruled by a human woman, one Djan, although matters are complicated because she's a refugee from the other (Hanan) side of the war.
(Also, while Djan has a few high tech weapons at her disposal, the nemet and the world as a whole are operating at a much lower tech level, something like bronze age/iron age Mediterranean, complete with triremes and other galleys of war. And there are a few other humans on the world, but they're tribal savages descended from generations-past crashed ship crews, and one of Kurt's challenges will be trying to convince the nemeth that he's not part of that particular group of humans.)
And, this being a Cherryh novel, much of the conflict and story will be driven by Kurt trying to fit his square self into the round hole of nemet society, causing much stress to himself and to Kta in the process; and while there will be fights aplenty, the conversations will be just as deadly, if not moreso.
So the story begins in the final moments of a space battle that may be the final moments of an interstellar war that has been waged for over two thousand years between two human factions -- the Alliance (the only quasi-explicit connection to the larger Alliance-Union setting, as far as I noticed) and the Hanan (about whom we learn practically nothing). The two contending ships destroy each other, leaving just one survivor, one Kurt Morgan, in an escape capsule. Fortunately, he's able to land on an inhabited planet in the system, home to the almost-but-not-quite-human race the nemet. Kurt is rescuted by one of the nemet, Kta by name, and taken back Kta's city, Nephane, which is, in fact, currently ruled by a human woman, one Djan, although matters are complicated because she's a refugee from the other (Hanan) side of the war.
(Also, while Djan has a few high tech weapons at her disposal, the nemet and the world as a whole are operating at a much lower tech level, something like bronze age/iron age Mediterranean, complete with triremes and other galleys of war. And there are a few other humans on the world, but they're tribal savages descended from generations-past crashed ship crews, and one of Kurt's challenges will be trying to convince the nemeth that he's not part of that particular group of humans.)
And, this being a Cherryh novel, much of the conflict and story will be driven by Kurt trying to fit his square self into the round hole of nemet society, causing much stress to himself and to Kta in the process; and while there will be fights aplenty, the conversations will be just as deadly, if not moreso.
January 22, 2018
I have adopted/rescued several of this author's books, but so far haven't read any. So, I picked this one up last night. It's from 1976, a classic era in sci-fi(1970's), and is telling the tale of a marooned human space-warrior on a planet a lot like earth, with aliens who seem to be a lot like humans. But ... there are humans around too, including formal enemies(also marooned) of our protagonist. The emphasis so far seems to be on psychology: the state of mind of the protagonist(despairing mostly) and the daunting, strange ways of the alien inhabitants. Good enough so far ... Funny, I was thinking recently about the dearth of female sci-fi writers, particularly in the golden age I referred to(60's and 70') and I just now found out that the author is FEMALE! I assumed a male - of course - WRONG again!
- This seems a lot like Star Trek; heavy on the fiction/drama and light on the science.
- The essential plot stuff here could be taking place on Earth in the 17th-18th-19th centuries. Culture clashing ... S. Pacific, Africa, S.E. Asia, Far East, the Americas etc.
- Ms. Cherryh is sparing with her prose. Some important stuff is implied rather than stated. That and all the political cross-currents are a bit confusing at times.
- "chani" = a tribute to Dune or vice versa?
The action kicked in about when I thought it would(had to!) and things have been fast and furious since then. Not mention very blood and operatic. Good stuff, but still not real sci-fi.
Finished last night with just a bit of skimming as I got worn out by the endless drama-infused dialogue. Seemed to me to be overly ornate and repetitive. My insight ... this book is a mash-up of Isaac Asimov and Mary Renault. The author is known to be a fan of ancient Earth civilizations and undoubtedly put her knowledge in that sphere to use in creating the nemet world. But ... there's just WAY TOO MUCH description of it, WAY TOO MANY weird character names, and WAY TOO MUCH dialogue, especially towards the end. Not enough emphasis was given to plot details and moving things along. The plot action seemed to double back on itself again and again. By itself the plot is pretty boilerplate sci-fi: lonely human finds himself marooned on an alien(though not all THAT alien) world. Gets involved in local culture and politics and so on. Conflict, both bloody and cultural ensue. Coulda-shoulda been better, but the lat 50 pages wore me out and got fed up with it. This book reminded me of my experience in reading "The Urth of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe, another sci-fi stalwart, in that it began well but ended in tedium. Maybe Ms. C. got to be a better writer as her career advanced?
- 2.5* rounds down to 2*. It was gonna be a 3* until the endgame, which took WAY too long and was confusingly and clumsily executed. By the end I found it to be a let down, for all the trouble the author took(too much) in creating the nemet culture. Maybe the author(and the story) gets better in the following installments(actually only one that I could find) of the Hanan saga. Apparently this is an early work in a very long career.
- Why didn't somebody think about getting the weapons for themselves sooner? Seems like a major deal.
- And one more thing: what does the title of the book have to do with the plot? Nothing at all that I could see. Seems like it was pulled out of a hat full of generic-sounding sci-fi phrases.
- This seems a lot like Star Trek; heavy on the fiction/drama and light on the science.
- The essential plot stuff here could be taking place on Earth in the 17th-18th-19th centuries. Culture clashing ... S. Pacific, Africa, S.E. Asia, Far East, the Americas etc.
- Ms. Cherryh is sparing with her prose. Some important stuff is implied rather than stated. That and all the political cross-currents are a bit confusing at times.
- "chani" = a tribute to Dune or vice versa?
The action kicked in about when I thought it would(had to!) and things have been fast and furious since then. Not mention very blood and operatic. Good stuff, but still not real sci-fi.
Finished last night with just a bit of skimming as I got worn out by the endless drama-infused dialogue. Seemed to me to be overly ornate and repetitive. My insight ... this book is a mash-up of Isaac Asimov and Mary Renault. The author is known to be a fan of ancient Earth civilizations and undoubtedly put her knowledge in that sphere to use in creating the nemet world. But ... there's just WAY TOO MUCH description of it, WAY TOO MANY weird character names, and WAY TOO MUCH dialogue, especially towards the end. Not enough emphasis was given to plot details and moving things along. The plot action seemed to double back on itself again and again. By itself the plot is pretty boilerplate sci-fi: lonely human finds himself marooned on an alien(though not all THAT alien) world. Gets involved in local culture and politics and so on. Conflict, both bloody and cultural ensue. Coulda-shoulda been better, but the lat 50 pages wore me out and got fed up with it. This book reminded me of my experience in reading "The Urth of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe, another sci-fi stalwart, in that it began well but ended in tedium. Maybe Ms. C. got to be a better writer as her career advanced?
- 2.5* rounds down to 2*. It was gonna be a 3* until the endgame, which took WAY too long and was confusingly and clumsily executed. By the end I found it to be a let down, for all the trouble the author took(too much) in creating the nemet culture. Maybe the author(and the story) gets better in the following installments(actually only one that I could find) of the Hanan saga. Apparently this is an early work in a very long career.
- Why didn't somebody think about getting the weapons for themselves sooner? Seems like a major deal.
- And one more thing: what does the title of the book have to do with the plot? Nothing at all that I could see. Seems like it was pulled out of a hat full of generic-sounding sci-fi phrases.
June 16, 2011
I would like this book a lot if it didn't make one of the most unforgiveable mistakes of science fiction, humanoid aliens.
Kurt Morgan, the main character, is stranded in the middle of their complex (but thoroughly human-like) culture. The only other true humans on the planet are some earlier castaways from centuries earlier who have turned barbaric in the meantime, and Djan, a more recent arrival who has made herself ruler of the city at which Kurt arrives. In general the book fits the descriptions I've read of early modern adventure novels, with the natives of the planet standing to Kurt and Djan in a relation like that of noble savages to powerful European outsiders. (The other humans would also be savages but not at all noble). In the first part of the book, though, Kurt rather thick-headedly brings disaster down on everyone around him by his ignorance of the ethnic tensions of the city, so that the suspense is about just how bad it will be and how much will be salvaged.
Kurt Morgan, the main character, is stranded in the middle of their complex (but thoroughly human-like) culture. The only other true humans on the planet are some earlier castaways from centuries earlier who have turned barbaric in the meantime, and Djan, a more recent arrival who has made herself ruler of the city at which Kurt arrives. In general the book fits the descriptions I've read of early modern adventure novels, with the natives of the planet standing to Kurt and Djan in a relation like that of noble savages to powerful European outsiders. (The other humans would also be savages but not at all noble). In the first part of the book, though, Kurt rather thick-headedly brings disaster down on everyone around him by his ignorance of the ethnic tensions of the city, so that the suspense is about just how bad it will be and how much will be salvaged.
February 14, 2016
This book has all the hall marks of a Cherryh novel, great writing, great atmosphere. But it piles improbability on improbability until the storm in a tea cup becomes a fully fledged civil war, amongst people with very long and difficult to pronounce names.
It started of well, but then all or a sudden this elite family is willing to let him live off them for the rest of his life. No where do I see any inclination in Kurt Morgan to make himself useful to his hosts. And on top of that he gets married even. All in the first third of the book.
By the end I really couldn't care what happened to any of them.
It started of well, but then all or a sudden this elite family is willing to let him live off them for the rest of his life. No where do I see any inclination in Kurt Morgan to make himself useful to his hosts. And on top of that he gets married even. All in the first third of the book.
By the end I really couldn't care what happened to any of them.
March 9, 2014
I first read this book when it came out in the '70s and it hasn't lost a thing in the intervening decades. More a tale of people with some science fiction elements thrown in, it was an early inspiration for my own writing.
did-not-finish
November 10, 2020DNF Page 50-something
Maybe it's early!Cherryh datedness, maybe it's just timing. Regardless, this one didn't hold my interest for more than a couple pages at a time. Returned to library.
Maybe it's early!Cherryh datedness, maybe it's just timing. Regardless, this one didn't hold my interest for more than a couple pages at a time. Returned to library.
October 5, 2021
A very intricate and maddening puzzle, perhaps with no solution. Cherryh effortlessly switches things up without ever losing the unity of the piece. Adult morality with no easy right or wrong, colonialism, religious intolerance, a deep and detailed culture... although nothing that alien. Overall, a conservative work with another of Cherryh’s Lord of the Flies riffs, aristocratic swashbuckling heroes, and the oppressed minority has only the choice of assimilation or destruction, and way out in the background of space, the humans have burnt entire planets. What these Brothers of Earth need is a labor union. But that would be a less maddening book.
April 17, 2018
Wow. I just noticed that this is the 51st book by C.J. Cherryh that I've read. I guess you could say she is one of my favorite authors.
This is an old one, 1976. I liked it, and I can see how some of her later ideas may have developed from this book.
This is an old one, 1976. I liked it, and I can see how some of her later ideas may have developed from this book.
July 4, 2021
Güzel bir macera romanı, farklı bir dünya ve kültürler. Hikaye akışı hoşuma gitti. Rocanno'un Dünyası
benzettim hikaye konsepti açısında.
benzettim hikaye konsepti açısında.
April 16, 2023
The first half was boring because of all the drama, the second half was way better because there were some epic fights
Read
March 15, 20252025 reread.
February 7, 2021
Cherryh put a lot of work into this, but I couldn't finish it. The hero is clearly too stupid to live, and yet we are forced to watch his every faux pas as he is manipulated by the various factions...I don't need a sympathetic protagonist, but I need one I can pity, at least. This one is too much a plot tool for the author.
If you enjoy LeGuin, this might appeal to you. It's more fantasy than sf, with a focus on the cultural accoutrements. I wish the plot hadn't irritated me so much. I just had to surrender and move on.
If you enjoy LeGuin, this might appeal to you. It's more fantasy than sf, with a focus on the cultural accoutrements. I wish the plot hadn't irritated me so much. I just had to surrender and move on.
January 18, 2024
On Phan, 1000 years ago the Indras sent ships across the sea and founded the city of Nepheme. The Sufaki already lived their but were defeated. Because the Nepheme treated the surviving Sufaki relatively well the Indras considered them heretics and would have nothing to do with them for a millennia.
In space, the hoomans have been fighting for 2000 years. In a space battle between the Alliance and the Hannan a Hannan ship flees and is pursued by an Alliance ship, unseen by anyone else. They battle in orbit of Phan, destroy each other, and only one pod escapes to Phan with the Alliance hooman Kurt. He is found by some Nepheme and taken to their Queen. Turns out she is Hannan. She rules because she is mostly fair and because all her guards are Sufaki. She turns Kurt over to the Nepheme and he goes native. His presence upsets a delicate balance where the Nepheme want to live in peace, the Sufaki want to be rid of the Nepheme, the Queen wants to maintain power, and the Indras wait for a sign of weakness.
In this book the Nepheme are basically feudal Japanese with their ancestor worship and rigid customs and family swords. Kurt is the white eyed foreign devil from beyond. The Sufaki are Amerinds straining to get off the reservation. The Indras are the British Empire looming. Their is a lot of world building and exploration of the Nepheme culture, and as in most Cherryh novels a heavy helping of politics, much of which is going on off screen.
Kurt is prone to violence and often overly emotional. Something happens that he does not like, he reacts violently, tries to flee, is caught and punished. And then he does the same thing again. Five or six times. He never learns. And every time it causes more problems on Phan, eventually leading to all out war and a lot of people getting dead.
It is a good novel about a man who is lost among strangers and will never see his home again, and about two cities with a common heritage divided by religion. I would have preferred that Cherryh pick one of those topics and explore it in depth instead of combining the two, but it was entertaining nonetheless.
In space, the hoomans have been fighting for 2000 years. In a space battle between the Alliance and the Hannan a Hannan ship flees and is pursued by an Alliance ship, unseen by anyone else. They battle in orbit of Phan, destroy each other, and only one pod escapes to Phan with the Alliance hooman Kurt. He is found by some Nepheme and taken to their Queen. Turns out she is Hannan. She rules because she is mostly fair and because all her guards are Sufaki. She turns Kurt over to the Nepheme and he goes native. His presence upsets a delicate balance where the Nepheme want to live in peace, the Sufaki want to be rid of the Nepheme, the Queen wants to maintain power, and the Indras wait for a sign of weakness.
In this book the Nepheme are basically feudal Japanese with their ancestor worship and rigid customs and family swords. Kurt is the white eyed foreign devil from beyond. The Sufaki are Amerinds straining to get off the reservation. The Indras are the British Empire looming. Their is a lot of world building and exploration of the Nepheme culture, and as in most Cherryh novels a heavy helping of politics, much of which is going on off screen.
Kurt is prone to violence and often overly emotional. Something happens that he does not like, he reacts violently, tries to flee, is caught and punished. And then he does the same thing again. Five or six times. He never learns. And every time it causes more problems on Phan, eventually leading to all out war and a lot of people getting dead.
It is a good novel about a man who is lost among strangers and will never see his home again, and about two cities with a common heritage divided by religion. I would have preferred that Cherryh pick one of those topics and explore it in depth instead of combining the two, but it was entertaining nonetheless.
November 11, 2025
This is the first book from C.J. Cherryh I read. The story takes place in an alien world after a single survivor of a space battle between the Hannan and the Alliance makes an emergency landing on the planet of the "Nemets", a humanoid race with a cast system and a deep belief in honor and family obligations/hierarchy. The beginning of the story seems to be inspired in the 1947 Partition of India, when India and Pakistan were divided; British India was divided into a majority-Hindu India and a majority-Muslim Pakistan. The human beings are somehow similar to the British Empire, and the "Nemets" (local inhabitants of the planet) are divided with a cast system similar to the one in India. One could see that the Nemets from a different religion are the "Sufakis" (or the "Sufaki Faction"). Being this a book from 1976, it makes sense that these striking resemblances were probably not as noticeable then as they are now. After that the book changes for the better. I consider this a good book and a nice story, that somehow has aged well. As per other reviews I have read, it seems like the stories in the Hannan-Alliance universe can be read independently and regardless of any particular order. I have a couple other books from C.J. Cherryh that develop on the same universe, I will update this review accordingly once I read them. One more thing to say, is that there is little "Science" on this book, this is more like a cast system, tradition oriented story, with similitude to the Indian culture and some other Asian cultures like those of Thailand, Japan, and China. Family, tradition, ceremony, custom, are very important to the Nemets and cause for lots of adventure, tragedy, and grief in this story.
October 24, 2019
Sería un 2.5 porque le ha faltado una pulida.
Pese a que es uno de los primeros libros de Cherryh, ya se perfilaban sus personajes masculinos principales tal y como se verán en sus mayores éxitos, el típico anti-héroe, al que luego le reprocharán de un modo u otro sus acciones apresuradas. Kurt Morgan es exactamente eso.
Llega a un mundo partido en dos tipos de gobiernos, aunque del mismo tono, en los que dos mujeres muy distintas gobiernan las partes y una de ellas es humana. La única humana que permanece en el planeta además de él, ya que los demás no cuentan verdaderamente como tales al haber pasado demasiados años sumergidos en la barbarie.
Noté un par de cosas:
Aun así siempre tiene en cuenta diferentes ópticas políticas, razón por la cual la leo. Eso está.
Pese a que es uno de los primeros libros de Cherryh, ya se perfilaban sus personajes masculinos principales tal y como se verán en sus mayores éxitos, el típico anti-héroe, al que luego le reprocharán de un modo u otro sus acciones apresuradas. Kurt Morgan es exactamente eso.
Llega a un mundo partido en dos tipos de gobiernos, aunque del mismo tono, en los que dos mujeres muy distintas gobiernan las partes y una de ellas es humana. La única humana que permanece en el planeta además de él, ya que los demás no cuentan verdaderamente como tales al haber pasado demasiados años sumergidos en la barbarie.
Noté un par de cosas:
Aun así siempre tiene en cuenta diferentes ópticas políticas, razón por la cual la leo. Eso está.
June 30, 2025
No sabía qué me iba a encontrar en mi primer contacto con Cherryh porque es una autora de la que he leído cosas muy polarizantes. Pero me ha gustado bastante, es un relato sobre prejuicios culturales y los puentes que se pueden construir para superarlos, donde un humano se encuentra en un planeta de alienígenas humanoides con costumbres y normas sociales muy distintas a las suyas. Me ha parecido interesantísima la profunda antropología cultural que vertebra la novela con las formas de parentesco de los nemet, sus normas de cortesía y honor, sus expresiones emocionales contenidas, su cosmovisión religiosa...
Lo que menos me ha convencido es la relación entre Kurt y Djan, es decir, que no la entiendo. Por mucho que sean les últimes humanes es ridícula la debilidad que siente Kurt por ella teniendo en cuenta todo lo que hace. Las demás relaciones sí son comprensibles, a destacar, claro está, la profundísima amistad (para mí homorromántica) entre Kta y Kurt. Es el verdadero gran amor de la novela.
Es una pena que la edición sea tan chapucera. Hay montones de errores ortotipográficos en casi cada página, sobre todo el problema de las rayas de guión que muchas veces desaparecen en medio de un diálogo y piensas que es un párrafo normal pero no, sigue siendo diálogo, solo que se les olvidó ponerlo o algo.
Lo que menos me ha convencido es la relación entre Kurt y Djan, es decir, que no la entiendo. Por mucho que sean les últimes humanes es ridícula la debilidad que siente Kurt por ella teniendo en cuenta todo lo que hace. Las demás relaciones sí son comprensibles, a destacar, claro está, la profundísima amistad (para mí homorromántica) entre Kta y Kurt. Es el verdadero gran amor de la novela.
Es una pena que la edición sea tan chapucera. Hay montones de errores ortotipográficos en casi cada página, sobre todo el problema de las rayas de guión que muchas veces desaparecen en medio de un diálogo y piensas que es un párrafo normal pero no, sigue siendo diálogo, solo que se les olvidó ponerlo o algo.
August 22, 2025
Read as part of my ongoing shelf audit. Verdict: not a keeper.
'It was ok' really sums up this book nicely. It's mostly an exploration of an 'alien' culture (though as other reviews point out, the aliens really just feel like... slightly modified Japanese people) and the disruption that an off-world human causes by his very presence in their society, challenging societal expectations and religious beliefs. There's some interesting stuff related to colonizer/colonized relationships, but because Kurt is our POV character, we spend less time on the cultural struggle between Indras and Sufaki than I would have liked.
I'm most let down by the character of Mim, the nemet woman Kurt falls in love with and marries, . Their relationship started off uncomfortably, as Kurt pushed nemet social boundaries to express interest in her in the first place, and while it did get better, she was quickly fridged and didn't get much chance to develop. Her unique perspective, both on nemet cultures and on humans, would have been interesting to explore further, and I'm disappointed that her role ended up being just 'sacrificial first victim of rising tensions in the city'.
'It was ok' really sums up this book nicely. It's mostly an exploration of an 'alien' culture (though as other reviews point out, the aliens really just feel like... slightly modified Japanese people) and the disruption that an off-world human causes by his very presence in their society, challenging societal expectations and religious beliefs. There's some interesting stuff related to colonizer/colonized relationships, but because Kurt is our POV character, we spend less time on the cultural struggle between Indras and Sufaki than I would have liked.
I'm most let down by the character of Mim, the nemet woman Kurt falls in love with and marries, . Their relationship started off uncomfortably, as Kurt pushed nemet social boundaries to express interest in her in the first place, and while it did get better, she was quickly fridged and didn't get much chance to develop. Her unique perspective, both on nemet cultures and on humans, would have been interesting to explore further, and I'm disappointed that her role ended up being just 'sacrificial first victim of rising tensions in the city'.
April 4, 2020
I have to admit, my expectations were low for this book, based somewhat on the cover and somewhat off the spate of mediocre 70s scifi I've been reading lately. I had also never heard of Cherryh, which I'm now ashamed to admit, because she's won about a zillion Hugos and is fascinating in general. This novel is the first she wrote and is almost shockingly good for a debut (technically her Gate of Ivrel was published first, but she finished Brothers of Earth first). While it does suffer a little bit from the curse of Too Much Going On and some subsequent sensation of hurtling along through the first through chapters at unsafe speeds, overall the novel is skillfully and subtly handled. (Maybe a little too subtly on the politics, as I got pretty lost in the motivations of the different factions pretty early on.) The novel's greatest strength is the well-drawn and developing friendship between Kurt and Kta, with the culture-building a close second. Definitely worth a read, and I'm eager to read more by this author now that my ignorance has been remedied.
March 27, 2020
3.5 stars rounded down - the pace is slow for about the first half, but when things get going, they really get going. Also the slow build to start is necessary to bake in the alien culture of the nemet. It reminded me a bit of Edo-period Japan (tea, meditation, Shinto-Buddhist-alike religion) mixed with Mycenaean Greece (the implied architecture, the triremes and maritime culture), and becomes very interesting when the chips finally come down. The tricky part is where our POV human character, Kurt Morgan, and his nemet friend Kta t'Elas, randomly misunderstand each other and make each other angry and/or sad. On the one hand it's probably an accurate idea of how a human would act if stranded alone among an alien (but near-human) race, but the prose is just a bit too spare to get into their heads, so it comes off as forced at times.
This is one of C. J. Cherryh's first books, so it bodes well for the future - she has a reputation for really interesting aliens, and it shows here.
This is one of C. J. Cherryh's first books, so it bodes well for the future - she has a reputation for really interesting aliens, and it shows here.
March 4, 2022
I love the care and attention CJ Cherryh puts into her alien races’ customs, mythology, and language. This level of detail is impressive here because it’s one of her earlier works. Unfortunately, I felt that the same care didn’t go into the actual story. Kurt, the human stranger in a strange land, basically stumbles from one mishap to the next with little agency and even less reason. It’s a book filled with this happened-the next thing happened-the thing after that happened, lots of names, and no real sense of why anything was going on.
Her more recent books are a HUGE improvement. Her female characters have also evolved beyond being there simply to adore the men, so that’s also a bonus.
Her more recent books are a HUGE improvement. Her female characters have also evolved beyond being there simply to adore the men, so that’s also a bonus.
June 17, 2021
Definitely a debut novel for sure but I will say that Cherryh does a very good job with fleshing out the different cultures within this story. However the pacing of this story was wayyyyyyyy to fast for myself. This book should have been a 400 or even 500 page book with the amount of content Cherryh stuffs into 254 pages. Also the insta love in this story was quite frustrating and could have been avoided potentially if the book was longer. That said though, the plot was intriguing and considering how well Cherryh fleshed out all the different cultures of people in the story, I’m excited to check out more of her work down the road.
February 28, 2019
wonderful book full of a sense of authentic wisdom during a situation where sometimes all there is is tough and complicated choices. some of the book felt rushed at the beginning as far as character relationship developed but the wisdom found in the later parts of the book made up for it.
December 20, 2017
Reread. One of her earlier works, economically written, a bit stiff (particularly in the dialogue). The alien culture is basically classical Japanese.
June 17, 2016
C. J. Cherryh's "thing" is constructing well-rounded alien cultures that feel real. This is a form of world building (one of the key elements of a good sci-fi novel), except that, by focusing on culture instead of, say, an alien environment or future technology, Cherryh's novels also, inevitably, focus on character. And having well-rounded characters is a key element that many sci-fi novels lack. Even some of my favorite sci-fi writers from childhood, like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, wrote amazing novels that sometimes starred cardboard cutouts who served only to move the plot along rather than truly inhabit the story of their lives.
Not so in Brothers of Earth. Granted, Kurt Morgan (our stranded human hero) and Kta t'Elas u Nym (his newfound friend and brother) may not rival Hamlet or Raskolnikov as the most nuanced characters in all of literature, but they do live and breathe on the page. They're emotionally consistent, believably reactive to other characters and their environment, and Kurt, at least, grows over the course of the story.
Here's what else I loved about Cherryh's characters: they don't suffer from the irritating sci-fi tropes used by lesser writers. For example, Kurt is not the White Savior who outperforms his Nemet hosts physically, mentally, and in every other way. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite. He's not particularly skilled with Nemet weapons, it takes him time to understand what's going on around him (which makes sense, given his circumstances), and--worst of all--he's indirectly (and sometimes even directly) responsible for much of the grief and tragedy suffered by his alien friends, as a result of his too-human reactions to the various culturally prescribed incidents in which he gets entangled. Although there is a vast political machine moving in a particular direction before Kurt arrives, his involvement is what pushes it to its final outcome.
And yet despite all this, Kurt is an extremely likable character. He's no overblown Charlton Heston-type hero, demanding that those damn, dirty apes get their stinking paws off him. Although certain condescending Nemet irritate him, his reactions are comprehensible and, well, human. He's believable in that way, and thus an entirely sympathetic character.
Kta is also interesting and likable, because of his deep and honorable friendship with Kurt as well as his alien qualities, which are decidedly nonhuman without being inscrutable. Again, Cherryh's forte is constructing believable alien cultures, and so we begin to understand Kta and his people as completely as any human anthropologist studying the city of Nephane would. My one, minor complaint is that Cherryh has crafted a society in a largely patriarchal mode. The woman have roles of prominence in religious matters (and religion does matter a great deal to the people of this world), but the men still run things. (I realize this discounts the prominent role played by Djan, the only other human on the planet, but her leadership, I have to be honest, doesn't make a whole lot of sense and is the one part of this book that baffles me.) Likewise, Kurt's alien bride, Mim, is that "perfect" male fantasy of the meek, beautiful alien girl who devotes herself wholeheartedly to her human husband. I can excuse all this insofar as Cherryh was writing this novel in the early '70s and, as a science fiction writer, was aiming at a very specific (and dominantly male) demographic. Plus it was her first novel (though it was published after her second).
Although there's not a whole lot of "sci" in this sci-fi novel (the Nemetian culture is on par with the ancient Romans, technologically speaking), I enjoyed it immensely. The characters are what made it for me. There were times that I got emotionally caught up in Kurt and Kta's trials and tribulations, and that's rare for me if I'm reading a pulpy, adventure-centric novel like this. So I loved it, and can't wait to read more by Cherryh.
Not so in Brothers of Earth. Granted, Kurt Morgan (our stranded human hero) and Kta t'Elas u Nym (his newfound friend and brother) may not rival Hamlet or Raskolnikov as the most nuanced characters in all of literature, but they do live and breathe on the page. They're emotionally consistent, believably reactive to other characters and their environment, and Kurt, at least, grows over the course of the story.
Here's what else I loved about Cherryh's characters: they don't suffer from the irritating sci-fi tropes used by lesser writers. For example, Kurt is not the White Savior who outperforms his Nemet hosts physically, mentally, and in every other way. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite. He's not particularly skilled with Nemet weapons, it takes him time to understand what's going on around him (which makes sense, given his circumstances), and--worst of all--he's indirectly (and sometimes even directly) responsible for much of the grief and tragedy suffered by his alien friends, as a result of his too-human reactions to the various culturally prescribed incidents in which he gets entangled. Although there is a vast political machine moving in a particular direction before Kurt arrives, his involvement is what pushes it to its final outcome.
And yet despite all this, Kurt is an extremely likable character. He's no overblown Charlton Heston-type hero, demanding that those damn, dirty apes get their stinking paws off him. Although certain condescending Nemet irritate him, his reactions are comprehensible and, well, human. He's believable in that way, and thus an entirely sympathetic character.
Kta is also interesting and likable, because of his deep and honorable friendship with Kurt as well as his alien qualities, which are decidedly nonhuman without being inscrutable. Again, Cherryh's forte is constructing believable alien cultures, and so we begin to understand Kta and his people as completely as any human anthropologist studying the city of Nephane would. My one, minor complaint is that Cherryh has crafted a society in a largely patriarchal mode. The woman have roles of prominence in religious matters (and religion does matter a great deal to the people of this world), but the men still run things. (I realize this discounts the prominent role played by Djan, the only other human on the planet, but her leadership, I have to be honest, doesn't make a whole lot of sense and is the one part of this book that baffles me.) Likewise, Kurt's alien bride, Mim, is that "perfect" male fantasy of the meek, beautiful alien girl who devotes herself wholeheartedly to her human husband. I can excuse all this insofar as Cherryh was writing this novel in the early '70s and, as a science fiction writer, was aiming at a very specific (and dominantly male) demographic. Plus it was her first novel (though it was published after her second).
Although there's not a whole lot of "sci" in this sci-fi novel (the Nemetian culture is on par with the ancient Romans, technologically speaking), I enjoyed it immensely. The characters are what made it for me. There were times that I got emotionally caught up in Kurt and Kta's trials and tribulations, and that's rare for me if I'm reading a pulpy, adventure-centric novel like this. So I loved it, and can't wait to read more by Cherryh.
December 25, 2015
I read this book because I've been meaning to read C.J. Cherryh for some time, and also because I was doing a challenge to read 15 space opera books by the end of the year. However, this book is not space opera. It's a planetary romance. That being said, it's a really good planetary romance, centered on a fascinating alien culture with about 17th century technology that reminded me very much of an Indus Valley sort of culture, with lots of formalities and strange social customs and caste systems and interconnecting (and internally clashing) racial divides. The plot? Picture Avatar if things had gone poorly.
Admittedly it uses some time-honoured sci-fi tropes that the artsy sorts would tell you immediately mean that it must not be taken seriously, but keep in mind it was written in 1976, first of all; and secondly, I say so what? I think people are far too hung up on being original, and they try so hard that they often lose the elements that make a good *story*. Cherryh is much more interested in character and story than in making sure that her universe obeys hard science, which is downright refreshing in the midst of the modern obsession.
Above all the strongest part of this book were the incredibly well-realized characters. I loved each and every one of them, despite and maybe because of their flaws, and even the villains are empathetic. Cherryh remembers that old saying that a story is something happening to someone you care about, and she has made me care about these characters. Enough that the ending annoys me somewhat, since it is clear that there will be more books to follow this one. I understand there are sequels; and therefore, quite a lot remained unresolved.
It's a chewy read; the kind of thing you have read in pieces to fully grasp the nuances. You can't just sit down and devour it. To be honest, with time running out in my late-begun reading challenge I selected it in part because it seemed a thinner book than many others I have and I thought it would be a quick read. Don't you believe it. But it was worth it.
Admittedly it uses some time-honoured sci-fi tropes that the artsy sorts would tell you immediately mean that it must not be taken seriously, but keep in mind it was written in 1976, first of all; and secondly, I say so what? I think people are far too hung up on being original, and they try so hard that they often lose the elements that make a good *story*. Cherryh is much more interested in character and story than in making sure that her universe obeys hard science, which is downright refreshing in the midst of the modern obsession.
Above all the strongest part of this book were the incredibly well-realized characters. I loved each and every one of them, despite and maybe because of their flaws, and even the villains are empathetic. Cherryh remembers that old saying that a story is something happening to someone you care about, and she has made me care about these characters. Enough that the ending annoys me somewhat, since it is clear that there will be more books to follow this one. I understand there are sequels; and therefore, quite a lot remained unresolved.
It's a chewy read; the kind of thing you have read in pieces to fully grasp the nuances. You can't just sit down and devour it. To be honest, with time running out in my late-begun reading challenge I selected it in part because it seemed a thinner book than many others I have and I thought it would be a quick read. Don't you believe it. But it was worth it.
November 7, 2021
Very confusing. Strange new language with very little translation.
I stopped reading after chapter 5.
I stopped reading after chapter 5.
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