Customer Reviews

Angel with the Sword: Merovingen Nights, Book 1

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ignore any bad reviews of this book. Ignore the off the wall numbering system. Any book that kicks off a series like Merovingen Nights is a really good book. so who needs a really strange but coherent socio-political-religious system that evolved to meet an identifiable, reasonable problem and makes sense of everything that happens? Most science fiction books do. Only some of them have it-like this one. Who needs a lecture to get it straight? most of them, but not this one. who needs starcrossed teenage lovers who act just like teenagers? well, Shakespeare did, so did Cherryh. They got them. Altair Jones is a star-struck, insecure, inconsistent teenage orphan who talks real tough; Thomas Mondragon is a smooth young aristocrat, a cynical, idealistic rebel-turned- adventurer who's out of his element and in a lot of trouble. They need each other, and they'll turn the whole town upside down. this is the story Shakespeare might have written if Juliet had had a backbone and a boat, and Romeo's whole faction had just been wiped out. The plot is rich: the villains are deadly, the bystanders are nervous, the politics are dizzying, the action is intense, but for Altair Jones, self-centered teenager, every thing is just one thing- Mondragon and her. It's funny, it's fast, it's exciting..it's exceptional. Read this book- you won't see many like it.

I have read "Angel with the Sword" more times than I can count and the reasons for doing so are myriad. The main character, Altain Jones, is an engaging young woman, tough, streetwise, and her romantic prospect, Tom Mondragon, is an aristocrat who nevertheless knows how to fight dirty. Their romance is my favorite part of these books, but the science-fiction element is also quite wonderful. They are set in a futuristic world that has somewhat regressed to Renaissance times. Jones is a poleboater in Merovingen, a city somewhat like Venice. The other reason I love the Merovingen Nights books is that they are short stories cut up and intertwined--I think they call it "braided" style. That way you can follow your favorite characters as they interact with the other ones. Many of my other favorite authors have written in these "anthologies," but C.J. Cherryh's Jones and Mondragon stories are the best, which is why I love the introductory book, solely written by her, all about them.

Before I talk about the story, you need to know two things about the book.
First, the story is set in the universe of the Union-Alliance novels, yet you don't need those books to know what's going on. The book is a stand alone and has lots of information in the back with maps, chapters on history, fashion and even language.
Second, this was meant to be the first in a series of books, very much like the Thieves' World series, but instead of a walled city of the Middle-Ages filled with magic and crime, this was more like a city-state of Italy (during the Renaissance) filled with politics and, sometimes, guns.
And the series did go on as other authors added their own skill and stories to the books that followed.
Now, for the story. Like all of her books, C.J. Cherryh starts small, with a character we think of as normal and a daily event. Altair Jones, the main female character, rescues a man who is tossed into one of the canals. This is normal - bodies are always being tossed in by gangs. But he lived and happens to be a high-born. He also happens to be in the middle of something that seems to get bigger and bigger as the story moves along. By saving him Altair might have also gotten herself involved with a mess that could end up with HER in the canals.
The dangers increase as the knots in this plot are untied and we get close to the truth about what is going on and why. C.J. Cherryh is an artist, crafting the story carefully from start to finish, she never wastes a page, a word or a letter.
This is a must for any of her fans or a good book to start with for people who don't know her works.
I plan to find the rest to see how well the saga went!

Angel with a Sword is not the second book in the Merovigen Nights series.It is a seprate book written beforehand by C.J Cherryh alone, with no colaboration with any other authors.The Merovingen Nights series is a follow up to this book and features seperate stories by different authors which are linked up time-wise so that they read like a complete novel.These stories also are written from the veiw-point of different characters in the overall book-ie.a minor charactor in one story would the main character in another and so on.

This book is CJ Cherryh at her best. Six hundred years ago, an alien race declared that a human colony was in *their* space and the humans needed to leave. But not all of them were willing to be evicted, and they endured the "Scouring" when the Sharrh came to finish the job. The planet itself added to the survivors' problems, with earthquakes and floods, so the cities -- particularly Merovingen, where the action takes place -- began to sink into the sea. The descendents cursed their ancestors for fools, ever since.

The story itself -- about a 17 year old "canal rat" who saves the life of a rich and gorgeous guy -- is one of her best love stories, and the action is non-stop. But it's her ability to create a believeable universe that awes me about the author. The world Cherryh created is absolutely real, and she brings it to life with its grittiness, poverty, and refusal to embrace despair. This is definitely SF, not simply a love story with space aliens on a blue screen in the background; Cherryh extrapolates the religions and economics that would result from the abandonment of the human colony.

Sometimes, an author will have a very clear picture of the world but deftly keep most of the details in her head, revealing them only as the need arises. In this case, the world-building details are clearly described, complete with appendices at the back of the book -- because Merovingen became the setting for one of the better Shared Worlds book series. (This is a whole, standalone novel, which you could read without feeling that you're committed to a lifestyle; the others in the series are short stories tied together with a Cherryh-written frame.)

I've had this book since it first came out, and I've re-read it several times. The spine is almost worn through, and my name is scribbled inside the front cover because I've loaned it out so often. It's truly a great SF novel: not in a life-changing Dune sort of way, but just a "Darnit, that's a good story!" sense. With so many Amazon sellers having inexpensive copies of this out-of-print title, it's silly *not* to get a copy.

Note that amazon.com lists both fever season and angel with a sword as MN #2. angel with a sword is the original and pilot for the series, of which 'troubled waters' is #2. i too love the book, and the series, and was dismayed to find out that i am missing #2 and #3.

the romance between altair jones, street girl, and exiled nobleman tom mondragan is pretty much background to the story and not too intrusive for those who dont want to get bogged down with a love story when searching for new worlds. it lends motivation to the characters to get into all sorts of strange plots and tangles. there are other engaging characters introduced as well. rif and rat the singers, and undercover agents of technology loving 'janes', the orphan brothers denny and raj, justice, richard and marina kamat, chanoum and casseiopia... characters that get a bit of their own storyhere and there, and then you see them itneracting as secondaries in another story.. and the best thing is that the series keeps taking the stories on. its entrancing, because you are always reading feverishly through one section to find out what happened where the story left off with the LAST batch of characters.

Okay; enter character one: Altair Jones, a tough young woman, raised as a guy in a Venice-like street setting. She does a little smuggling, has a few friends. No father- mother's been dead for a couple years. Runs the 'buisness on her own.' A little late to pick up her 'cargo' one night, she catches a bunch of hooligans dumping somebody over a bridge. Altair saves the man's life. Enter Thomas Mondragon. Handsome, suave- rich. Of course, Altair falls in love with him. He treats her right- she helps him to get back to 'his' side of town, only to have to dig him out of scrape after scrape. Though Altair originally feels herself at a disadvantage around Mondragon because of her upbringing, it's her unique childhood- if it could be termed that- that gives her the skills to pry him out of his mistakes, and gives her the street savy to recruit others to their cause- namely, getting Mondragon back where he belongs. I'm not going to spoil the rest of the plot for those who want to read this book, but I would suggest it for anyone just tentatively dipping their toes into Science Fiction. Cherryh manages to keep a fantasy like style without much tech. talk- Angel could easily be set in medieval Venice. The confusing part comes toward the end- Mondragon's fate is kind of shaky, not too clearly defined to the nail-bitten reader, and the Sharrh and various religious groups are never fully explained. To balance these minor deficiencies, Cherryh has- possibly without intending to- done a wonderful job of portraying characters that exist in an enviorment that she most likely has never incountered- no, I'm not refering to the poverty. Many writers have come from families that weren't exactly rich. But the street-tough, futuristic, religious enviorment- and the people that come out of it- are entirely believeable.

Anyhow, I would suggest that you read Angel, if only for the tough talking heroine and the incredibly realistic characters.

Numbering can get confusing as this book is shown as No. 1, but the following anthology is also shown as No. 1. The main character, Altair Jones, is one of those people that you are immediately drawn to (somewhat like Lisbeth Salander in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"). The young woman Jones has inherited a canal boat from her mother, and poles it through the canals of a Venice like city, sometimes carrying people, and sometimes carrying freight. The job brings her into contact with a wide range of society and leads to various adventures. It is the Jones character, more than anyone, who carries the series forward in the following anthologies.

Jones does not really trust men, but when she rescues one from a canal she becomes involved in an affair. Mondragon enters into her life. The canalers have their own form of society, separate from the nobel families, merchants, artisans, entertainers, etc. From their standpoint, it is pretty much live and let live as long as other people don't cause them trouble.

I always wished that Cherryh would give us more of Jones, but we have to make do with rationed out segments in the following anthologies. Like Lisbeth Salander, she does not deal with police, but canalers have their own ways of settling things if you get on their wrong side.

Certain aspects of this book are overly commonplace in the fantasy genre. The characters, for example. There always seems to be one streetwise, tough, poor, smart gal running around. While this type of character can be very interesting if brought to life well, Altair Jones doesn't come across as being very real- and neither does Mondragon. There is a lack of serious portrayal about these two, or anyone else for that matter. Then there's the fact that some things just don't seem beleivable. Altair was raised by her mother to think that men are the scum of the earth. So how does she suddenly fall madly in love with the blond aristocrat? Fateful love? I don't think so. The author doesn't take the time to subtly engage them- instead, they both are in love a few moments after they meet, and wham! they sleep together. The dialogue seems pretentious- the boat-talk of Altair is unconvincing, and Cherryh would have done better to have dropped it out altogether. There is not enough detail about this world to make it real in our minds. The plot drags. The dialogue seems uninspired. There is too much unnecessary details that makes turning each page a chore. I've seen much better books.

ok alot of people didn't really get it, I did. I'm not sure if I just have good reading skills or what. I loved this book, after the first time I read it, I bought it. I love the characters, the descriptions of the scenes and the people were very precise and detailed, alot of books don't give me that clear of an image of the setting to which the author wanted to depict. this one did and it made the reading experience more enjoyable, the plot was difficult and thus made it more interesting and hard to follow, giving the reader more to think about and to keep guessing. I love books like these and I wish authors would write more like them.