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juushikaAlmost finished?/caught up? with the Alliance-Union books, which is surreal.
Title: Chanur's Legacy (Chanur Book 5)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: DAW, 1992
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 454,185
Text Number: 1586
Read Because: continuing the series
Review: I was hesitant to return to this world because the next generation & Tully's absence felt like a losing combination. But! Hilfy is fantastic. The plot here is ridiculous, often in a charming ways: Hilfy is conscripted to make a diplomatic delivery that predictably goes to shit under the influence of the Stsho —who are a lot—and the ghostly figure of Pyanfar. Pyanfar's lingering impression, on Hilfy and the wider setting both, gives a meaningful sense of consequence to the previous books. Tully is here, in spirit, buried in Hilfy's memories and echoed in a new outsider to Han galactic culture that creates a delicious tension in the ship's social dynamics. This is fun: a separate-but-not sequel which is more fun and consumable than the core series.
Title: Hellburner (The Company Wars Book 5)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: Warner Books, 1992
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 365
Total Page Count: 454,550
Text Number: 1587
Read Because: continuing the series
Review: A rare direct sequel, this comes after Heavy Time and follows the same cast: Pollard is stranded on Dekker's battle installation, his unwanted next of kin, during a dangerous change of command. I really didn't want to spend more time with Pollard, but it turns out that "make Pollard suffer" is a great premise for a book, and the character growth that emerges is surprisingly satisfying. Dekker is a pilot in need of a specific crew, and Cherryh has a lot of thoughts on what it means to fly as crew: the intimacy (or lack thereof) of that bond and the responsibility of the work, from grunt pilots to aces flying at hyperspeed. She also makes the Earth side of the Alliance-Union world more interesting than I expected: less speculative and more scrappy than the other players, the meditations on the military and on capitalism lack an immediate hook but, like Heavy Time, speak to real-world issues.
Title: Tripoint (The Company Wars Book 4)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: Aspect, 1995
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 360
Total Page Count: 456,260
Text Number: 1593
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed Open Library
Review: Twenty years ago, a sleepover-turned rape resulted in the birth of a boy; now a man, he's crimped onto his father's ship. This is the Alliance-Union book about sex and rape - and Juu, you might say, isn't that Cyteen? or Forty Thousand in Gehenna? Or Rimrunners, or maybe the Hilfy bits of the Chanur series (bless)? And I reply: yes, there's a lot of it there, so even more remarkable that this is *the* sex book, all about the repercussions of rape, the politics of family and Family ships, and relationships formed around and via sex.
Cherryh does this uncomfortable thing of making rapists people, too: The rapist-father is objectively awful, but the protagonist has to build a working relationship with him anyway. The most interesting character in the book crosses the line into rape while remaining interesting and lynchpinning the larger plot. It's not easy reading, nor often satisfying, but I appreciate the nuance. So the interior and interpersonal struggles in this are engaging; but the larger plot is back-heavy and only okay. That said, I like this a lot as a counterpoint to Rimrunners, which it much resembles.
Title: Chanur's Legacy (Chanur Book 5)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: DAW, 1992
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 454,185
Text Number: 1586
Read Because: continuing the series
Review: I was hesitant to return to this world because the next generation & Tully's absence felt like a losing combination. But! Hilfy is fantastic. The plot here is ridiculous, often in a charming ways: Hilfy is conscripted to make a diplomatic delivery that predictably goes to shit under the influence of the Stsho —who are a lot—and the ghostly figure of Pyanfar. Pyanfar's lingering impression, on Hilfy and the wider setting both, gives a meaningful sense of consequence to the previous books. Tully is here, in spirit, buried in Hilfy's memories and echoed in a new outsider to Han galactic culture that creates a delicious tension in the ship's social dynamics. This is fun: a separate-but-not sequel which is more fun and consumable than the core series.
Title: Hellburner (The Company Wars Book 5)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: Warner Books, 1992
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 365
Total Page Count: 454,550
Text Number: 1587
Read Because: continuing the series
Review: A rare direct sequel, this comes after Heavy Time and follows the same cast: Pollard is stranded on Dekker's battle installation, his unwanted next of kin, during a dangerous change of command. I really didn't want to spend more time with Pollard, but it turns out that "make Pollard suffer" is a great premise for a book, and the character growth that emerges is surprisingly satisfying. Dekker is a pilot in need of a specific crew, and Cherryh has a lot of thoughts on what it means to fly as crew: the intimacy (or lack thereof) of that bond and the responsibility of the work, from grunt pilots to aces flying at hyperspeed. She also makes the Earth side of the Alliance-Union world more interesting than I expected: less speculative and more scrappy than the other players, the meditations on the military and on capitalism lack an immediate hook but, like Heavy Time, speak to real-world issues.
Title: Tripoint (The Company Wars Book 4)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: Aspect, 1995
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 360
Total Page Count: 456,260
Text Number: 1593
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed Open Library
Review: Twenty years ago, a sleepover-turned rape resulted in the birth of a boy; now a man, he's crimped onto his father's ship. This is the Alliance-Union book about sex and rape - and Juu, you might say, isn't that Cyteen? or Forty Thousand in Gehenna? Or Rimrunners, or maybe the Hilfy bits of the Chanur series (bless)? And I reply: yes, there's a lot of it there, so even more remarkable that this is *the* sex book, all about the repercussions of rape, the politics of family and Family ships, and relationships formed around and via sex.
Cherryh does this uncomfortable thing of making rapists people, too: The rapist-father is objectively awful, but the protagonist has to build a working relationship with him anyway. The most interesting character in the book crosses the line into rape while remaining interesting and lynchpinning the larger plot. It's not easy reading, nor often satisfying, but I appreciate the nuance. So the interior and interpersonal struggles in this are engaging; but the larger plot is back-heavy and only okay. That said, I like this a lot as a counterpoint to Rimrunners, which it much resembles.
no subject
Date: 2023-04-04 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-04-05 09:15 pm (UTC)If you picked up the book for the hani, I also like how the worldbuilding for them develops as the series progresses and various internal conflicts make them feel a little more real and diverse as a species. It's never as realistic as I'd like, but it's interesting, and the pseudo-inverted gender roles play a big part of Chanur's Legacy in particular.
no subject
Date: 2023-04-05 09:41 pm (UTC)I should go back and re-read it and then more of the series.