Chanur's Venture [Paperback]

C. J. Cherryh (Author)

Book Description

Series: Chanur | Publication Date: January 6, 1987

In the sequel to Pride of Chanur, Tully returns, and brings with him a priceless trade contract with human space--a contract that could mean vast power, riches, and a mess of trouble for Pyanfar Chanur. Reissue.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Currently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J. Cherryh has won three Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. 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. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: DAW (January 6, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0886772931
• ISBN-13: 978-0886772932
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,786,144 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've written sf and fantasy for publication since 1975...but I've written a lot longer than that. I have a background in Mediterranean archaeology, Latin, Greek, that sort of thing; my hobbies are travel, photography, planetary geology, physics, pond-building for koi...I run a marine tank, can plumb most anything, and I figure-skate.

I believe in the future: I'm an optimist for good reason---I've studied a lot of history, in which, yes, there is climate change, and our species has been through it. We've never faced it fully armed with what we now know, and if we play our cards right, we'll use it as a technological springboard and carry on in very interesting ways.

I also believe a writer owes a reader a book that has more than general despair to spread about: I write about clever, determined people who don't put up with situations, not for long, anyway: people who find solutions inspire me.

My personal websites and blog: http://www.cherryh.com
http://www.cherryh.com/WaveWithoutAShore
http://www.closed-circle.net

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Writing, But Where's the Ending?, September 10, 2003

By 

David A. Lessnau (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chanur's Venture (Paperback)

This book picks up about a year after "The Pride of Chanur" leaves off. From the very first moment, you're caught up in the plot and furiously trying to turn the pages faster and faster in order to see what's going to happen. But, then, after about 170 pages of extremely well written, tightly packed, emotionally wrenching, pages, right at the very pinnacle of tension, it ENDS! Aaaargh! There's no excuse for this except pure greed on the part of the publisher. This book should never have been published without its sequel, "The Kif Strike Back." I feel really bad giving such an excellent piece of work such a bad rating. But, unless you have the sequel handy (perhaps as part of the "omnibus edition" "The Chanur Saga" (which apparently ends without ITS finish)), I can't recommend you read it. If you've got the sequel(s), definitely read all of them. But, don't get just this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars The return of Tully, November 20, 2010

By 

Chrijeff (Scranton, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Chanur's Venture (Mass Market Paperback)

In the sequel to Pride of Chanur, it's been two years since we last saw Pyanfar Chanur and her crew, and things haven't been going well for them. The paranoid, xenophobic, and combat-averse stsho, who run the oxygen side of Meetpoint Station, are unappreciative of the upset attendant on Pyanfar's sponsorship of the human Tully after he escaped his kif captors, and they have barred The Pride of Chanur from the station, while the mahendo'sat, instead of sharing humanity's trade with the hani, have gone off to pursue it on their own. Pyanfar has just gotten her papers cleared (without, inexplicably, having to pay the usual exorbotant bribes) to dock at Meetpoint once again when she encounters the mahendo'sat huntership captain Goldtooth, who has brought her "a present"--Tully, back from human space with what Goldtooth claims is an offer for trade--as well as a packet of documents to be delivered to the mahe government, and an almost unlimited credit with it to soothe any misgivings. But, as once before, there are wheels within wheels in this situation, and Pyanfar and her crew, though they're pleased enough to see Tully again, soon find out that there are things they're not being told. And the sinister gray-skinned kif are after Tully once again, and not disposed to hold their fire if anyone else gets in the way. What's more, Py's husband Khym, who has been deposed by his own son after hani custom, is now voyaging aboard The Pride, a fact considered scandalous by not only his own people but every other oxy-breathing race in the Compact--and he's not sure he wants another male on the ship even if it is an alien.

This is just a quick overview of the tangle in which The Pride finds itself enmeshed, as once again trade takes a back seat to politics and interspecies relationships turn murderous, while a representative of the hani council sticks her nose in where it isn't wanted and gums everything up all the more. Though perhaps not quite as fast-moving as the first volume in the series, this one is equally convoluted and suspenseful, and also includes a very helpful Appendix in which Cherryh gives the reader some important background details about the seven Compact species. The various alien characters are well-drawn and fascinating (though the hani are the focus, I admit to a liking for the cheerful, shambling, pidgin-speaking mahendo'sat), and once again the author demonstrates her uncanny skill at making an alien people seem real, sympathetic, and almost less alien than their human shipmate.

5.0 out of 5 stars Where are the rest?, November 22, 2008

By 

Rae Lynn Reynaud "Rae Rae" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chanur's Venture (Chanur Saga-2) (Kindle Edition)

My two favorite series for many years have been Cherryh books. So my question is where are the rest of the series? You can't put out one of a series and get a good reaction. It's just cruel. I highly suggest the Chanur series and the Faded Sun series by Cherryh. Here's hoping they get the better ones on Kindle soon.

Rae Rae