Hunter of Worlds

Alliance-Union Universe

by C.J. Cherryh

A million people were about to die! The entire population of the planet Priamos was marked for death if one person on the surface could not be found in time. The staggering order was emotionless and inhuman — exactly like the iduve, the strange aliens who had handed down the decree.

Perhaps the most advanced and least understood race in the known universe, the idvue lived in giant spaceships that roamed in random patterns around the galaxy. For nearly two hundred years one of these mammoth vessels, The Ashanome, had been stalking an offender ... one of their own kind who betrayed an ancient rite and fled into the sanctuary of "human" space.

Now, as The Ashanome went into orbit around his hiding place, it was time for vaikka, the ultimate vengeance and return of honor which the iduve cherished above all else. To accomplish their task, they commanded the aid of three very different individuals — Aiela Lyailleue, a young man of the peaceable kallia race who was forcibly inducted into the Starlord's service, possibly never to see his home or family again; Daniel, a savage human with nothing but fear and a blind hatred for his captors; and Isande, a beautiful woman who knew more about the iduve than the iduve themselves.

Together, through the process of Asuthi, all three had their minds melded into a single entity — learning not only each other's language, but each other's way of life, inner feelings and deepest secrets. For in a short time they would descend to the threatening surface of Priamos. Their mission: search out and kill the offender.

If they were to be successful, they would surely need the combined resources of all their wits and intuitive knowledge. Within a few short hours, the trio had to find the needle in the haystack — or they and all the planet's million other men, women and children would perish in a single, searing flash of white hot energy. The iduve knew no other way...

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Aliens, Speculative Fiction

254 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1977

About the author

Currently 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.

Reviews

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid, old-school Cherryh. It doesn't have the power or polish of Cherryh at her best (e.g., Downbelow Station or Gate of Ivrel) but it moves along well and it displays the author's usual skill at creating truly nonhuman species.

It's greatest weakness - as pointed out in another review - is the passivity of the main characters (the kallia Isande and Aiela, and the human Daniel). Daniel offers some resistance to his iduve kidnappers but their overwhelming superiority (both technical and physical) make it pointless in the end. Tension and conflict arise from seeing how these largely helpless protagonists carve out some measure of autonomy within the context of their situation. (It reminds me of Mick Farren's Protectorate, where humanity must learn how to survive on the sufferance of two alien superpowers.)

Recommended for Cherryh fans, primarily.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another early Cherryh -- her third published novel -- that's ostensibly Alliance/Union, but set very far down the timeline and without much in the way of explicit connections. (Which makes sense given that the main A/U books -- Downbelow Station most notably -- weren't even a gleam in Cherryh's eye at this point.)

This one also prefigures some of her later books -- most especially The Pride of Chanur -- in interesting ways.

So we're off in another distant part of space -- the Esliph Reach, this time -- that's dominated by other races but has had some human contact. The most ... consequential species in the region is the iduve (the most advanced race in the galaxy, we're told), blue-skinned humanoids who fly around in city-sized ships pretty much just doing whatever the hell they want; and if they come to your system, you'd best also be doing whatever the hell they want. But they don't for the most part have a lot of interest in ruling -- their chief concerns are their own, inscrutable internal politics.

Other major races in the region are the kallia (an entirely different race of humanoids whose skin is a different shade of blue) and the amaut (unattractive and maybe kind of toad-like in appearance?). Plus some human-settled areas off on the peripheries.

As things begin, an iduve ship, the Ashanome has come to Kartos Station, throwing things into an uproar. And by the time the ship leaves, it will have acquired (much against his will, but he knows better than to resist) the kallia Aiela, who is then implanted with technology that will allow -- no, force is probably a better word -- a mind-link between himself, Isande (a female of his own species) and Daniel (a captured human who has no idea what the hell is going on), all in service to incomprehensible iduve politics and a feud between one Chimele (leader of the ship Ashanome and all those aboard it) and another iduve formerly of her faction.

As I said, a bit reminiscent of The Pride of Chanur, most notably in that there's only one actual human throughout most of the book, and we mostly only see him from the outside, through the perceptions of the other races.

Complicated, well thought-out alien psychology and languages, interesting characters and more than a fair bit of action.

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a thoroughly enjoyable venture into old school, classic science fiction. While I have been fond of this authors work since I was a teenager, I had never read this one before - I am %90 certain I have not, anyway.

This book is mostly about alien species and civilisations from the point of view of aliens. There is a human character (or two) later in the story, but those are presented to the reader from the outside, rather than being our primary character. We follow Aiela, a member of the Kallia race, who is taken from his ship on the orders of the Iduve. The Iduve are the undisputed ruling species in the parts of the galaxy this story occurs in. They are technologically superior to all other races and what they say goes, without question. Part of that is that their mind set is so alien to other species. They seem coldly logical and see no problem with eliminating any individuals, ships, stations that oppose them in any way.

Once Aiela is on board the ship, he becomes bound to Chimele, the Iduve who is head of her ship /clan and also to another member of his race, who was born and bred on the ship. And their bone is later expanded to include a human called Daniel. All this is part of some vast, complicated, vengeance/honour story in which the clan is involved.

It was a great deal of fun to read, surprisingly undated in attitudes and the best part of it all was the deft complexity that has gone into creating the alien races, their social characteristics and their physical constraints. This made it excellent reading. This is a classic sci-fi style book, it is strong on the the alien societies, weak on science, it would probably be classed as space opera, if it came out today. The thing that took a while getting used to was the language.

Back in the day, it was very common for authors to create a whole language, or at least a set of words to define a different race/species. Cherryh has done that very effectively but the reader can't always figure the meanings of alien words out from context. There is an appendix or two to help you out, at the back of the book but it has been a long time since I read a book like it, so it took me a while to get back in the swing of this kind of reading. Once I got into it, I actually found myself enjoying it considerably, I far preferred this approach to the more modern one, where you have members of allegedly other species, who have never met humans, using teenagers slang - that I find incredibly irritating, this I actually ended up enjoying.

Anyhow, very glad I made to to this classic science fiction.

the kallia Isande and Aiela, and the human Daniel). Daniel offers some resistance to his iduve kidnappers but their

[Rebecca Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid (if rather dated) book, Hunter shares a lot of themes with the Chanur novels, though those seem much more polished: isolation, loyalty, identity, and the strangely prominent spectre of interspecies sex. Cherryh as usual has excellent aliens, though her liberal use of alien _terminology_ is a double-edged sword; it makes plain the differences among their patterns of thought and culture, but the reader has to pick up most of them from context (there is a glossary at the back, though), and their density can be sort of overwhelming.

I found the plot of this one a bit difficult. The central conflict has to do with events among the ruling aliens (iduve). There's a big chunk of explanatory backstory at point, but the causes are all in the past and hence rather abstract. The protagonists are only involved because the rulers want some tools; two of the three have no personal stake in the matter, except for being enslaved, and other than hoping for their survival, there's really no one to root for.

These problems in defining the conflict carried through a resolution I found unsatisfying. The characters don't get much of a development arc beyond acceptance of their situation. I get the feeling that we are supposed to feel sympathetic for the iduve at the end, but... these are people willing to destroy a planet to get one guy over an obscure-to-humans matter of saving face. I think I'd rather drink with a kif.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the most difficult of Cherryh's novels I have read. There are 3 alien species and a human. There are 4 different languages in use, words that I have difficulty remembering. The glossary in the rear is helpful. I loved it. Because, the point of view of the novel is from the 3 aliens an human cultural and biological imperatives, all different. This is an early example of Cherryh's forte, the exploration of aliens and alien interaction.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenological examination of the emotions generally considered negative.

[Tomislav · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate intellectually what Cherryh was attempting to do here - plot a story in a complex created culture based on telepathic relationships among three alien species and a minor sprinkling of humans. Its weakness is the extensive use of made-up vocabulary of those three alien races. I frequently referred to the three short dictionaries at the end of the book, but still had a lot of trouble following what was actually going on. However, the strength is in the hidden stories of the human characters implied in the background. While alien motivations and feelings are extensively explained, the human feelings are never actually more than hinted at, and mostly shown through carefully hidden actions. This is a very ambitious soft/social SF novel, but barely readable.

[Lynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cherryh has a unique skill at world-building, and at depicting an alien viewpoint. This is one of her best at showing both attributes. I have read it many times and own my own copy because of her talent at plotting and characterization as displayed in this book. I'm going to quit writing this review because I basically just gush about how good it is.

[William Leight · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another early C.J. Cherryh novel with an interest in ideas of alienness that she would do better with later. “Hunter of Worlds” features three alien races, the Iduve, the kallia, and the amaut: all three are supposed to be utterly alien to humans and to each other, with clashing belief systems that the others struggle to understand. Unfortunately, Cherryh mostly fails to distinguish between culture and innate, biologically-driven impulses: a quick glimpse over the various societies of Earth today indicates that a wide variety of belief systems are compatible with basic human nature, and there’s no a priori reason to believe that aliens would be any different. Hence the Kalliran desire for peace and order, and the Amaut longing for land, appear to be more a question of cultural than biology: these are easily conceived of as human, and hence not particularly alien. Only the Iduve, with, among other things, their barely-concealed predatory instincts, the physical violence that lies just below, and sometimes above, the surface of every possible encounter, their treatment of any disagreement as a direct challenge, and their total deference to pregnant females, manage to appear genuinely alien. The scene in which Chimele can only barely hold herself back from a physical attack on Aiela, not because she wants to attack him but because every instinct in her body is screaming that he is challenging her position and needs to be dealt with, is brilliantly executed, and shows the possibilities of this kind of science fiction. However, one genuinely alien race out of three is not a great percentage, and the Kalliran-human clash mostly boils down to the Kalliran characters being unwilling to challenge authority, to make a fuss, or to throw their lives away in a hopeless cause: this makes them different from Daniel, the main human character, but hardly renders them incomprehensible. And the story is also fairly confusing: Cherryh doesn’t have quite as good a grasp on maneuvering and intrigue as she would achieve later, and so the plot is jumpy and difficult to follow at times. Also, it relies heavily on telepathy, in a way that didn’t entirely make sense. The Iduve are interesting and Cherryh mostly does a good job with them, but mainly this is Cherryh working through ideas that would be put to better use later.

After I had read the book, an interesting light was thrown on it by an article by Judith Tarr at Tor.com, in which she points out that many female science fiction writers of this general time period — Cherryh was one of the ones she mentioned — seemed to prefer to make their female characters aliens, presumably on the grounds that editors, publishers, and readers (and perhaps also the authors themselves) would be more accepting of female characters who violated traditional human gender norms if they were not human. Certainly, in most of Cherryh’s ‘70s novels — this one, the Morgaine books, the Faded Sun books — the prominent and interesting female characters are aliens, while human women are relegated to minor roles (Margaret in "Hunter of Worlds" is depressingly Victorian, present only to suffer and be motherly) or absent entirely. (The exception that proves the rule here is “Brothers of Earth”: Djan is, nominally, human, but comes from a culture so different from that of Kurt, who represents the human viewpoint, that she might as well be an alien.) It seems not implausible that, at least at the beginning of her career, Cherryh felt (for whatever reasons) that it was easier to write female characters who were, when necessary, violent, hard, and ruthless, while rarely being caring or affectionate, as aliens. The flip side (which Tarr doesn’t mention in her article) is the question of how this affects the readers’ perception of these characters: if it was easier for authors to write characters who violate gender norms as alien, was (and is) it also easier for readers to read such characters as alien? Does the fact that Chimele is a female struggling to repress her violent instincts make her appear more alien to me in her scene with Aiela than would be the case if the character were male instead? I’d like to think not, of course, not least because I think that Cherryh has just written a really good scene that doesn’t depend on the gender of its participants, but it’s hard to know for sure. It’s an important reminder, though, that the question of what it means for behavior to be alien is a trickier one than this book sometimes seems to think.

[Stuart Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Idulve are super aliens who ruled with an iron fist for thousands of years, then the disappeared. Now they are back. Aiela is a member of a passivist race who lives in fear of the return of the Idulve. When they do come back they take him to serve them. He is forcibly given Elon Musk's mind control chip and linked psychically with two others. One is a female member of his race whose people have lived on an Idulve world ship for thousands of years and worship the Idulve. The other is a hooman, Daniel. Daniel was a soldier captured during a losing war with a race of mole men. He is imprisoned and tortured by the mole men and forced to watch as other hoomans die around him. As such he has a great fear of aliens and developed xenaphobia (an irrational fear of Lucy Lawless). The Idulve want some information from Daniel and expect Aiela to get it out of him.

Naturally it is very difficult to get anything from Daniel as he is both terrified of aliens and is not happy to be suddenly mind linked with them. Aliela and the girl are not too happy either with being linked to this barbarian, plus they have diametrically opposed views of the Idulve. Much time is spent covering these three learning to live with each other in their brains.

The second half of the book covers much Idulve politics and the hunt for a certain Idulve renegade. The Idulve are heartless aliens who kill lesser beings with no provocation and kill other Idulve almost as often. Aiela is in constant threat of being eliminated, and Daniel almost goes out of his way to antagonize them.

It's a book about different cultures learning to appreciate their differences and grow withing themselves in the process. The use of made-up alien words is annoying, but the overall story is interesting. There is only the one hooman in the whole book, so we have to learn about each alien in turn which is intersting in itself.

[Tarryn Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has long been my favourite Cherryh novel. I think my enjoyment rests on the intensely well crafted worldbuilding of the alien species, the contrasts between them, and the finely-drawn characters who interact in the set pieces.

The humans in this novel are almost an afterthought. The primary mover, if you can call it that, is a small interclan kerfuffle among an all powerful species called the iduve, with violet eyes and dark skin. They are immensely strong and their technology irresistible, and they are essentially the uber predator.

This minor disagreement between spacefaring clans has destroyed an entire fleet of human warships and left a trail of destuction in its wake that is threatening whole planets. Into this situation falls a kallia explorer and space captain, who is taken captive by the iduve for their own reasons. The kallia are the uber prey species, some of whom have served the iduve aboard their huge ships for millennia. Their green skin and soft transparent hair form an odd contrast to the violent iduve.

The part of the book - I won't spoil the plot in any way - that I enjoy the most is I feel the dense cultural milieu of the alien species. This is top tier sci fi and speaks to themes of loss, of being caught in titanic struggles and being utterly helpless in the face of destruction. The single human character has almost no agency in the chaos except to try to do the right thing, and that tiny agency is the linchpin around which events turn.

As I said, I feel this is her best. Don't be put off by all the alien languages, because they are quite easy to guess from context and only add a layer of realism to the story.

[Delway Burton · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Cherry" is one of the masters. However, no matter how clever this book may seem at first, the plot becomes muddled, melodramatic, and nonsensical, even in this artificial world. She creates two languages with a glossary in the rear. Some of the paragraphs may contain 5-6 foreign words. I learned some, looked up a lot, but many are similar, and after a while it all became very, very tiresome.

The omnipotent race that seems to run this part of the galaxy function like the Greek gods. The bop around space in city-sized spaceships looking around for centuries for one individual who has broken some arbitrary code of honor. The search has a time limit, you are taken to the last hours, and if the individual cannot be found, a planet and a million souls are zapped. Then the main hunters of the "bad" guy are 3 beings from different species linked by brain implants who are charged with finding the bad dude. Very, very random.

[S.T.I.G.]

DNF - been on this way too long and just not sparking joy. Too much vocab for me in the end and even though they were pretty cool and interesting I just never got much into caring about the characters.

Maybe the last 2/5s of the book gets more into them, but, idk. Seems like some of the most interesting things about them just weren't going to get gotten into.

More time spent on: "I felt for her presence - AH my head hurts cuz her head hurts" and "Takana has Paksha'd in the presence of my keonin matra too long - this is too great of wikaa for me too ignore. It is for me as though I were a Ij'nital in full heat and Takana a kullnioni who rigatoni'd my linguini in the way of a pakarrli and not as a mushu might."

And I'm like fuck man, I'm out. Counting it tho cuz spent a lot of time on it + have easily read enough TTRPG content and script pages to equal like 2 books tbh.

[C Jon Tice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this classic hard cover at a used book store and finally got around to reading it. I wasnt aware it was a sequel and at times it was very difficult to follow as many new words and terms made me dizzy. I dont care to jump back and forth to the glossary so i pushed through until I started recognizing most words but never all because some were so closely related it was slightly maddening. The constant use and context was done well eniugh to catch on but it did take a while to adapt hence the 4 stars.
I will read the first book but I dont think the language will be any easier.

[Paul Womack · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see what was being attempted here, but for me it landed on somewhat familiar ground.

The special concepts described by created alien jargon have simple human meanings, readily expressed in English, and (as per usual) the incomprehensible alien culture is about 90% Japanese.

Since the plot of the book is simply an exercise in navigating the alien-ness, and showing what happens when it butts up against humans (and vice versa) I didn't greatly enjoy it.

[Lonnie Veal · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I liked best about this book was the notion of meeting alien civilizations. And in this case-- What if they are so powerful that they just don't Care what you think? In most novels, Humans are the ascendant power in the galaxy. This story, we are the weak johnny-come-latelys who don't know how to stay out of the way

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cherryh does such a great job in world building, providing each story a rich foundation.

[Bob Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brothers of Earth & Hunter of Worlds are earlier works and are difficult to read. Still good!

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Far more remarkable for the alien language than the plot; I enjoyed the challenge of consulting the glossary.

[Mely]

2025 reread.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3 Stars)

First off, this book was much, much better than Hanan Rebellion #1. Second off, these books don't have anything to do with each other. I will accept they take place in the same universe, but that doesn't matter at all.

Some things I liked about this book: there is an effort at making actual alien races, with different goals and basic philosophies/morals; the book includes science fiction and is not just a framing story around medieval times; there are strong women characters; the universe feels big and complicated.

Some things I didn't like about this book: there is an abundance of made-up words, which, by the end of the book, I was more accepting of than at first; the characters' actions don't always seem to match the precepts of the universe they are in - godlike beings who destroy at a whim accept nigh-rebellion and insurrection; the stakes are wildly variable to different characters; it's not at all clear that the protagonists' side is the one we should want to win.

A final discussion point I'll mention is around the different moralities of the species involved. This could have been the thing the book circled around, and although in some sense it did, it wasn't to celebrate the morals (some) humans have which some alien species in the book don't; in particular, the (human) instinct to take care of a child is referenced, used, and the book closes with it, but it carries the same emotional heft as the a species who wants to be farmers compared to a species that prefers order. The book felt muddled and without catharsis.

This story left me hopeful that future Cherryh books will be enjoyable, whereas Hanan Rebellion #1 had me dreading them. I'll say that for it, at least.

[Lupercal · Rating 3 out of 5]

This early CJC novel started strongly. In particular its 'multicultural' area of space, with trading stations and an older race which had introduced spacefaring to the locals was a premonition of the CHANUR saga. So was much else: the emphasis on inter-species politics, and the lone human as the outsider. Overall it was an impressive and promising novel, but I feel it fell down in a couple of obvious areas.

First, the 'cultural relativism' isn't resolved. The Iduve may be inscutable, but are we supposed to forgive their abhorrent treatment of other sentient species purely on this basis? In the Hani saga, The Kif are at least rendered comprehensible. Which leads to the main complaint:

at the end of this paperback comes a ten page glossary, consisting mostly of alien abstract nouns. It may have been more use at the START, but not by much. So many paragraphs include half a dozen alien abstract concepts in italics; you really just have to parse most of them as gibberish unless you want to interrupt the narrative by constantly referring to the glossary which you don't yet know exists...

And the end was pretty lame.

But the portents are here. A writer gathering her strengths; yet to do away with her weaknesses - but in hindsight this novel was a sandbox in which ideas were tried out. Five years later CJ would be the gold standard in SF. It had to start somewhere.

Loop

[Bogi Takács · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a few unsorted thoughts -

I read this right after the Clarion writing advice book and this novel basically breaks every single rule. I think it'd be completely unpublishable today, but I enjoyed it! It has many of the same themes as Cherryh's Foreigner, but I liked this one better. I think the different alien species and their thought processes are handled better and with less exoticization; characters are genuinely struggling to bridge the gaps and even make some headway. (Note that I only read the first volume of Foreigner.)

Some of the invented words could've been more distinct, when there is a single-letter difference, that's IMO confusing. I was amused that one of them had a quite close Hungarian parallel.

One thing that annoys me about these "aliens force people to do things" stories is that frankly, for every weird thing I read in them, I'm sure *volunteers* could be found. Same here, I'm sure many people would voluntarily and happily serve the scary starlords. Maybe that would please the author less?

An interesting thing I seldom see in SF is that this book has both technological and biological telepathy as distinct processes, with their own limitations and advantages.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hunter of Worlds has some really alien aliens. They aren't just humans in a rubber suit; they really do have different worldviews from humans, and their own vocabulary (lots of it). Very few SF stories have convincingly alien species, so hats off to C.J. Cherryh for achieving it.

It's a double-edged sword, though. All the main protagonists and antagonists are aliens (of different species), they are hard to empathize with: their perceptions and reactions aren't mine, and I found it difficult to follow their motivations and responses. All the glossary-hopping didn't help, either. The one human character is mostly offscreen and barely sketched out as a character, so didn't provide any kind of reference to view the aliens from.

This is a decent SF story which does a good job of portraying interstellar tension in an alien universe, and I enjoyed that it's different from anything else I've read for a while. But I found it pretty hard work to get through and I never really engaged emotionally with the alien characters.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm really not sure what to think. Cherryh is an amazing writer, the way she uses words to create her universe and create her story is simply stunning, but this was a tough book to get through. Because of the fairly large amount of alien vocabulary, I found myself constantly flipping back and forth to the glossary of terms in the back (yep, there's so many alien vocabulary that the book requires a glossary), and this really removed me from the story each and every time. The Induve were a stunning and beautifully created race, and I absolutely loved the dark background for how human beings fit into this universe. But I found the actual story to be very lacking, and I found it hard to root for the main character when his captures essentially manipulate his every action. The ending was also a large dissappointment. This book has many great aspects, but also a good amount of disappointments.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, CJ… I will never quit you.
Let’s see… we have different alien races with different psychologies and ideas of honor… check… we have a super-powerful queen figure of dubious morals… also check… vulnerable protagonist man in her thrall - actually make that TWO vulnerable-yet-strong-and-willful protagonist men in her thrall. DOUBLE CHECK. And a ticking clock plot that races toward the conclusion until everyone is in peril and you can’t believe how thin the stack of pages under your right thumb is and there’s NO WAY they are getting out of this… until they do.

I’m not saying you repeat themes, CJ… I’m just saying I like them. :D

I see from Goodreads this is like number two in a series. As usual I will fail to use that knowledge in any way as I just pick up CJ Cherryh books whenever I see one without regard to series or publication date, just so long as there are spaceships or stars or something about space on the cover. :D

[Hoyt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this to be a very frustrating book to read. The overall concept is fine, but the author used way too many invented words that were too close to each other which detracted from the storytelling. Sure there was an included glossary, but I don't expect to have to study vocabulary before reading a novel!

I did appreciate the alien-ness of the non-human psychologies portrayed here, and I can see how the author thought that this required some new language, but not quite this much :)

Still, it is an early work, so I'll continue reading...

[Yblees · Rating 5 out of 5]

A personal favourite. I read this some 20 years ago and lost my original copy.
Tracked down and purchased a secondhand, hardback copy a couple of years ago, and have re-read it three times since.

Now my current, 1977 edition copy is giving way due to age. I'll be taking it down to the bindery tomorrow to see if they can rescue it. If they can't, I'm going to be on my third copy of this book fairly soon!

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid and gripping. A story of a few powerless slaves caught up as bit players in a vengeance mission and politics of a powerful alien race. The alien antagonists are pitiless and ruthless but by the end, even though they haven't changed a whit, you've been seduced into giving them a grudging respect. This hits you all the more when you realise the protaganist has gone through the same. Respect from a deeper understanding or Stockholm's syndrome?

Ultimately a compelling novel.

[Bron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to dig out my old paperback copy, to my great disappointment, this is not available in Kindle format and I had a real urge to read it again. I always feel it's one if a pair with Brothers of Earth though I'm not sure why as there's a lack of clues to suggest they are even in the same universe. Cherryh has created more wonderful aliens, and a few humans who manage to get tangled up in an exercise of pride and honour by powers far beyond their comprehension.