Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One human.with two cultural identities., April 5, 2000
Following the interception of a spaceship of unusually high capability, crewed by creatures from a world nine light years distant, the cat-like, judge warrior, Duun-Hatani becomes the central figure in a covert programme through which a human baby boy is genetically engineered from the last of the spaceship's dead crew. He calls the boy - Thorn. Duun gambles that, Thorn, after becoming integrated into their society and, through the use of archive material - mostly tape recordings - found on the spaceship, will become sufficiently well versed in human traits, also, that he can mediate between the two cultures, if they should meet up, again, sometime in the future. From Duun's perspective this could be next decade or next week: neither he nor anyone else are sure of the spaceship's real capability despite having duplicated one, and Duun's people are incapable of speaking or interpreting the information on the tapes. It is hoped that Thorn will have inherited some instinctive means by which he can grasp the meaning of the tape recordings. This turns out to be the case. Duun has Thorn send a message. And they wait. Like the rest of C.J.C's Sci-Fi I have read, Cuckoo's Egg primarily concerns itself with the characters' motivation and the thinking behind it, imbuing her books with a high degree of reader-character association. I find this adds an extra dimension to what would be fairly standard for the genre in terms of action, technology, and plot, creating stories, which transcend the limitations of such; a robustness that makes me remember them much more easily than would usually be the case with others' work. Readers of Cuckoo's Egg should also find the following worthwhile: Cyteen, and the Foreigner series, both of which draw quite heavily on Cuckoo's Egg for some of their inner details.
|
|
|
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"A wobbling orb like the world in space.", January 5, 1998
By A Customer
I just finished reading this book, and found it so moving--what a wonderful book! It was gripping from beginning to end, and beautifully written. I marked this passage on page 158 of my edition in which Thorn, one of the main characters, is moved to tears at his first sight of the world from space, and how he wipes his tears away "and a droplet floated free from his fingertip, perfect, a wobbling orb like the world in space." That is a perfect image in itself, but it is also symbolic of the war going on below them, and the mourning it is causing.The plot of the book is summarized in the jacket quote and another on-line review. I will only add that it revolves around the main character's solution to his world's problem: come to know your enemy (aliens, in this case) intimately, and come to love them--like sons, even--and you cannot kill them: with the hope that the aliens will do the same for you.In this book, Cherryh develops a cast of memorable characters that will live with me for a long time. I highly recommend this book.
|
|
|
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you're a Cherryh novice, this is the one., October 1, 1998
By A Customer
I was browsing the library shelves when I saw this book. I was interested in the title, but the cover art pulled me in. I flipped the book open with one hand as I was walking to my car....about an hour later, I noticed that I had blown my lunch hour and should've been back at work 20 minutes ago! The depth of the characters in this book is wonderful. The story gives nothing away - it entertains without letting you guess what will happen until - it happens! No other author I've ever read had the talent to do that. The others either throw something in at the end which has no tie at all to the threads of the story (Asimov, for one, with apologies to fans of the Doctor) or they give the plot away halfway through the book. Not so with Cherryh - the reader is as clueless about the character's future as the character is. It is as if you live the action of the book with the charcter. Wonderful writing! Read and enjoy.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
