Quote:
Originally Posted by WillAdams
Thanks Wayspooled, but I meant that _Downbelow Station_ should be read first, not _40,000 in Gehenna_ (apparently it should be read after _Cyteen_, since sending out the expedition which it covers is a central plot element of _Cyteen_) --- it (40,000) definitely should not be first, since it's dense and requires knowledge of Union politics and Azi status to fully appreciate.
William
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Yeah, that's true and exactly my experience. First time I tried reading Gehenna was before I'd read Cyteen and it bored the heck out of me and I quit about 1/3 the way through. The second attempt, I was hooked on Cherryh's merchanter Alliance/Union stuff and her rolling downhill prose style, desperate to read something related to A/U and I liked it a lot.
Her publishers have not been good for her in many ways as far as the omnibus/collection reprint editions of stuff. My favorite of hers, the Chanur stuff.. 5 books, The Pride of Chanur, the first, standalone.... the 2nd - 4th are one story she intended published as one book which they split up, but that was okay. Then the last one is standalone. Taken as 3 books, they're just best sci/fi I've ever read or at least as good as anything else I've read. Then like 15 years later they come along and they are republished in two omnibuses with books 1-3 in the first one and 4-5 in the second one. The end of book 3 is like in the middle of a story, like watching a 2 part tv show premiere and then having to wait a year for the 2nd part (2nd omnibus). That kind of stuff is downright offputting to new readers.
Then the overly kitty-like covers of the Chanur stuff, I like them because I love the books but how does someone new to her works expect seriously good work inside? I would never have bought them because of the covers back when I first read them. A big sci/fi fan, someone I worked with loaned me one and said it was the best thing he'd ever read and heh, I didn't even read it for a year. I like dogs and cats, most of my pets have been dogs but we had cats as a kid and I like them fine, but I never wanted to read a sci/fi book about them. Bleh.. But that's not what it's about.. The main chars ancestry is non-earth related feline and it has effect in the story but it's not at all a story about "kitties". It's a story about multiple alien culture's reaction to the unexpected insertion into their "universe" of the existence of the previously unknown human race - the different reactions of 7 completely different alien races - through one human captured off a lost exploration scoutship by one of the other alien races - and escaped onto the docks of the station where all of these species meet to trade... and there's some shipboard combat and space battles but it's the kind that makes believable sense because they're backed up by economy and species survival concerns and individual self interests and pretty accurate science. I just love those Chanur books heh..