Customer Reviews

Hammerfall (The Gene Wars)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

CJ Cherryh reminds me of the little girl who, `when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad she was horrid.' Unfortunately, this is one of the horrid books.

Although Cherryh's writing style has become ever more polished and skillful with time, the quality of her characters and stories are not always as consistent. In this case they are positively bad. Approximately 80% of this book is taken up with interminable descriptions of primitive tribesmen crossing a desert. The amount of science fiction is minimal, and there are no new or interesting ideas. The characters are flat, bland, humorless, and cloyingly politically correct. The story is boring, linear, and predictable.

There is a major hole in the plot you can drive a caravan through: A huge starship belonging to a sophisticated civilization has landed on one side of a desert. The people on the starship need to send a very urgent message a few hundred miles to the other side of the desert. Inexplicably, instead of using advanced technology, they entrust this urgent message to a caravan of primitive tribesmen, who must travel for weeks to deliver it. They practically drive the tribesmen (and the reader!) insane with continual fatuous mental messages to hurry up. Finally it's revealed that the starship had small `fliers' all along.

If a ten year old thought up a plot like this, I would laugh and gently point out the inconsistency. When a Hugo and Nebula award-winning author uses this as a central pillar of her story, I am left aghast by the magnitude of her self-indulgence and her contempt for the reader.

What happened to the believable characters and the powerful, original, fast-moving story of Downbelow Station? The layer upon layer of political intrigue of Cyteen? The unbearably poignant loneliness of Merchanter's Luck? The philosophical questions raised by Voyager in Night? The complex, delightful three-dimensional characters and zany humor of Hellburner and Tripoint? The nail-biting tension of the first Chanur book? Even the early Morgaine stories have a dynamism and humor that Hammerfall lacks.

This book is all style and no content. If you enjoy minutely detailed and repetitive accounts of tribesmen crossing deserts, you may enjoy this book. Otherwise don't bother - rather read one of the good books by this author listed above. Please, CJ, don't waste your own time writing inane and disappointing drivel like this, when you can do so much better. The hammer should have fallen on this book before it was written.

From the reviews I'd read for this book I went in not expecting to find it very enjoyable, but I was pleasently surprized. This is not a bad book. It may not be on a level with Cherryh's best work, but it is a good read. Cherryh is know for her complex plots, and well drawn aliens, this book does not have either but it does not miss them. It is a simple straight forward story with a simple almost everyman hero. It pulls you into it's world and makes you care what happens next. It was a nice change of pace from the huge complex multi volume sagas that seem to be dominating the genera lately.

I can't believe it. Prior to my reading this novel, I've loved most everything Cherryh has written. This is the first of her works that I haven't at least liked. It started out well: I was fully engrossed in the protagonist's trip through the desert. But then, after that, Cherryh had them travel back (with a probable trip back, again). Half way through that first return trip, I said enough was enough, nothing's happening, and put the book away. Aside from the utter lack of a meaningful plot, I just couldn't fathom WHY this was happening: one group of galactics needs to contact another, apparently fugitive, galactic and they take 30 years to do it via nanobots in the general population who then have to walk across the desert and die in droves to even find out that someone wants someone else to receive a message? Huh? Why didn't those galactics use some equivalent of a radio? At the very least they could have tried walking up to the front door and talking. How about skywriting? Dropping a message capsule on the city? Literally anything would have been more efficient than what they did. I don't know why Cherryh wrote this the way she did, but I hope it's not repeated.

'Hammerfall' is a tremendously rewarding novel. I couldn't wait to get home from work so I could pick it up again. The main strengths of this novel are Ms. Cherryh's reknowned world-building skills and her believable characters...which is not to say it lacks a compelling plot.

The world of 'Hammerfall' is fascinating in its complexity. Ms. Cherryh has created a wonderful desert world peopled with God-like rulers and nomadic desert tribes. The camel-like beasts of burden are fascinating. The characters are richly imagined and deftly drawn. We, the readers, completely understand the main character's motivations and are able to sympathize with the tough decisions he has to make.

The plot is the weakest part of the novel. Essentially, the book is made up of three trips across a wide desert. Cherryh spices it up with the 'mad' visions sent to special characters and the constant threat of danger from the skies, but, as mentioned earlier, the magnificent tapestry of her fictional world make the book interesting reading even with a less-than-compelling plot.

Though the plot is slow, I believe that when this book is viewed as part of the overall series (of which there is at least one more book to come), it will fall neatly into place as the first volume of an exceptional and very worthwhile series. Highly recommended.

Since he was eight, Marak did his best to conceal the visions he saw and ignore the voices he heard because he knew either condition is considered a sign of madness. Those who are deemed mad are turned over to the Ila. Until he turned thirty, Marak successfully hid his delicate situation. He joined the war against the Ila, trying to break into the great city where she lived in splendid security. Marak confesses his illness and his father disowns him, giving him over to the soldiers for disposal to Ila.

After traveling across the large desert, Marak meets the five-century-old Ila. Everyone who is dubbed mad hear voices telling them to go east. Ila wants Marak to do just that but report to her what he finds. After a long arduous trek, Marak reaches a tower where he meets Ian and Luz, Ila's peers, claiming that the world is coming to an end. If he is to survive he must return to this tower with Ila and as many people as will go with them.

C.J. Cherryh is one of the most gifted science fiction writers of our time and with her latest novel, HAMMERFALL, she has created a new universe for the first time in thirty years. The story line reads like a modern day Noah's Ark as the audience keeps on reading to learn what happens as a world gets destroyed. Those sequences of scenes are brilliantly crafted. The protagonist is a hero as his actions and choices speak well of him as a person. Ms. Cherryh has another winner in this novel.

Harriet Klausner

There are science fiction writers who are good, some who are excellent, and a few who are masters. CJ Cherryh is a master. I've read the comments of other reviewers and sense a great deal of impatience. Reading a book is not a race. Hammerfall is an excellent story written with prose that is a pleasure, with phrases, descriptons and characters that can be savored. The reason this book has been reviewed by so many is that CJ Cherryh is one of the pre-eminent authors of SF/F, past or present. For those of you who are in a hurry to get through life, go to a movie with lots of noise and bombs, but little substance. For those of you who take pleasure in the elegant details of life, read Hammerfall and take pleasure in it. I do have one confession to make: I too am impatient, impatient for the next oportunity to share in the imagination and skills of a writer as gifted as CJ Cherryh. For those of you who are already fans of CJ Cherryh, just read it and enjoy it. For those of you who are new to Cherryh, read it and enjoy it. A novel by CJ Cherryh is a promise of pleasure and Hammerfall is a promise kept.

Hammerfall is not what I was expecting. This book has none of fun, helter-skelter pace of her Chanur novels, nor the philosophical and political depths of her Cyteen, nor even the fascinating alien cultures of her Faded Sun books. Instead, we are treated to three separate treks across a desert, with a culture that could be lifted directly from the Bedouins of Arabia, complete with clearly recognizable camels and nomadic tribes.

The elements of the story that could be interesting, the vermin, the city culture of the Ila, the nano-technology itself, the actual picture of the destruction of the hammerfall, are all off in the deep background, beyond the real understanding of the main character Marak. In addition, there are at least three major logical holes in the plot. The first is the use of the tribesmen, traveling by foot, to convey a simple message between two star-travelling level entities (surely there are faster and more precise methods to communicate). Second is the constant mental 'voices' heard by the 'madmen'. While these voices and visions made a little sense at the beginning, after Marak meets with the Luz, they no longer serve a warning function, but instead become a major interference in allowing Marak to accomplish his given task of leading the world's people to sanctuary. Why would Luz continue this form of 'communication' in the clear face of its detrimental effects? Third, the 'sanctuary' itself. No explanation is offered for how this one area of the world can be kept safe from the climactic events of the hammerfall, which at the least would cloud the atmosphere for years with high level dust, interfering with any crop growing anywhere on the world.

This is apparently the first of series of works in a 'Gene Wars' set. Hopefully succeeding books will bring more explication to high-tech cultures behind the founding of the world in Hammerfall, and a return to Cherryh's usual attention to detail and careful plotting.


--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

In this novel, Cherryh takes on the theme of nanotech and the changing of worlds. It's a theme generally done very badly. She handles it well, keeping the focus of the story on realistic human beings and avoiding unbelievable extrapolation. Hard-SF fanatics may find that the nanotech is kept too much in the background for their preference.

Nearly all the story takes place during journeys. Some reviewers have complained about that, though I'm not sure why. The travelling is clearly relevant to the plot and takes place between well-defined points and for vividly stated reasons. Essentially, the world as the characters know it is going to end, and Marak, the main character, must try to save whomever he can. The book starts a little slowly, but the tension soon ratchets up exponentially. Along with the threat of utter destruction from the skies, Marak faces personal challenges in dealing with the people around him, including his murderous father.

The desert tribespeople are not Cherryh's most detailed or dramatic culture, considering that she is one of the best creators of sociological SF currently writing. But they are realistic and human.

The flaw that I found with this book was that I wanted more of the cataclysm, when it comes. An entire ecology is destroyed, as well as all the former lands and villages of the characters, and I wanted to see more of that.

This is an intelligently written book and I would certainly recommend it.

This book seems a bit different than most of her stories, but you will be glad you read it when you read the next in the series wich is set centuries in the future from this story. Then you will see how it fits with her work.

The reviews really put me off and I held off reading the book until today; but guess what, I just finished reading the thing in one sitting (it is now 6 am and I'm debating whether I should catch an hour of sleep before work). There is a slower pace, but it seems right, and it is NOT dull or boring as some here claim; and the expected level of quality is there, I'd say easily on a par with foreigner series. The story is engrossing and internally consistent (as usual, I wish there was more of it); there are no logical inconsistency that can't be explained away if you read the story carefully enough for the explanations. Best of all, I get the feeling that this is only the beginning of the story line/series (this may in part explain the slower pace) There is a possible tie in with any of her universes (I'm hoping for Union/Alliance); I'm certainly interested in what happens next, please!!!