Customer Reviews

Chanur's Venture

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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

The Chanur series is one of CJ's best. The POV is fascinating, and the "human" elements are delightful.

First of all: Have you read _The Pride of Chanur_? If not, stop immediately and go and do it, because this one is the second part of a four-decker and if you attempt them out of order you will have no idea what's going on. Now, then. The story picks up a year or two after Pyanfar Chanur and her crew of cousins have gotten straight with the Han government and with their trading rivals after almost singlehandedly bringing humanity into contact with the more civilized parts of the Compact. However, there are deeply conservative, xenophobic elements among the Hani who would just as soon they had never entered galactic society and that challenge becomes clearer as the plot progresses. The Mahendo-sat, who themselves were the first aliens to contact the Hani a few centuries earlier -- and who also want a piece of the new trade-pie but who aren't as bloody minded about control as the Kif -- are trying to manipulate the situation, even going so far as to use the totally unpredictable, methane-breathing T'ca and Knnn as pawns, and *nobody* understands *them*. If all this sounds complicated, that's because it is. But, if you read from the beginning of the saga through to the end, and if you pay attention, you'll witness one of the most fascinating psycho-political struggles you've ever read. It takes considerable talent to get the reader to understand the internal and external political mindsets and social structures of several very alien races -- and to do it from the point of view of yet another alien race. This is extraordinary stuff -- but start at the beginning. And be aware that the story doesn't end here, not even with a traditional cliffhanger. No, it simply pauses -- and you want to have the third volume ready to hand.

Every title in this series is worth a second and third read. Especially to those who are already Cherryh devotees and have become blissfully familiar with the strangely comforting peculiarities of her various characters' individual pattern of mental processes. An excellent companion can be made from each one of Cherryh's books . Easy to let this author become a favorite.

Chanur's Venture by C.J. Cherryh is a great add on to the Pride of Chanur. I can't wait to get started on the next book in this series. Which is the Kif Strike Back.

This is a true Sci-Fi book with space travel and creatures of all shapes and sizes. From the Tc'a, which are snake like beasts: "On the violet one, a huge serpent form, which moved and shifted restlessly before the waist-up glass." " Wrinkled, soft-leather skin with phosphor-glow in the gold, eyespots large as a fist, five of them clustered round a complex trifold mouth/sensor. The tongue darted constantly. The body shifted to this side and that, which Tc'a always did." All the way to the Mahendo'sat which is a dark furred primate like race: "And rounding a collection of canisters awaiting dock side pickup, she spied a dark-furred, all but naked shape: mahendo'sat-ordinary encounter anywhere on Meetpoint. But this one flung wide his arms. His eyes lit up, his broad mahen face broke into a charming grin that showed blunt primate fangs all capped in gold." The mahen that was just in the previous quote is known as Goldtooth, which he basically ends up starting the series of mishaps that happens to the Hani crew of The Pride. Hani are basically a lion like race, and The Pride is the name of the ship that this certain Hani crew led by Pyanfar Chanur travel in space with. This book starts you off at Meetpoint Station were Pyanfar is to have a meeting with her old friend Goldtooth. But after this meeting Pyanfar and her crew's situation got bad and then worse and so on. And to think most of their troubles are started all because of some human the Kif are chasing. I am going to stop now because I don't want to give away any more of the books story line.

But any way from beginning to end this book kept me in suspense with all the exciting things that kept on happening. But especially the part when Hilfy and Tully were taken. It made me wonder what would happen next. I think that the end of this book was quiet satisfying for a series book. I believe that any Sci-Fi reader would really enjoy reading this book. Thank you for taking the time to read my review.

I can't understand why so many people have said that this author's works are "well written". Cherryh's style of disjoint, clipped sentances along with her lack of detail on so many subjects which are crucial to the understanding of the interplay in the political game she is striving to describe, make reading her books aggravating in the extreme.

That is not to say that she doesn't have some good ideas and that her plot is not interesting. She does, and it is. But it is so hard to read! Her character interaction in a galatcic pidgin english doesn't help things either.

These books are readable, if nothing better is around, but they could have been oh so much better.