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Chanur books by CJ Cherryh
Apr. 10th, 2021 01:02 pmPride of Chanur, Chanur's Venture, The Kif Strike Back, Chanur's Homecoming, and Chanur's Legacy
4/5. Series about the captain of a trader ship who gets embroiled in interspecies politics when her crew accidentally acquires the first human anyone in that sector of space has ever seen.
Oh man, Cherryh is so good at these stories that radically decenter humanity. This entire series is in alien POV about aliens, and while some of the ways this alien culture is put together are kind of funny to me, the whole thing is a hell of an accomplishment. (You see we partially know they're aliens because it's a matriarchal culture where men are seen as unstable and untrustworthy, which, like, is the opinion of 90% of my female acquaintanceship, soooo). There is one human character in this book. He is generally incomprehensible to our narrators, to the point where its even difficult as a human reader to get a good grasp on him, and to understand more than tiny snatches of the vast and terrible story he is unable to really tell.
That's the theme of these books – communication and comprehension and incomprehension across vast gaps of understanding. Pushing yourself beyond the constraints of culture to try and try and try to meet a stranger, an other, somewhere in the middle that might be comprehensible to you both. There is so much language play in these books; there are a good half dozen species who talk in various combinations, and not a single one of those combinations is easy or clear. And some of them, like the matrix-brain aliens who speak in a 5x5 grid, are hard as hell.
Anyway, this series is truly an accomplishment, and I'm glad I read it. But like a lot of Cherryh, it's also more intellectually exciting than emotionally exciting. There's a chilliness to her writing, even when she's telling stories about people experiencing strong emotions, and that's on display here.
4/5. Series about the captain of a trader ship who gets embroiled in interspecies politics when her crew accidentally acquires the first human anyone in that sector of space has ever seen.
Oh man, Cherryh is so good at these stories that radically decenter humanity. This entire series is in alien POV about aliens, and while some of the ways this alien culture is put together are kind of funny to me, the whole thing is a hell of an accomplishment. (You see we partially know they're aliens because it's a matriarchal culture where men are seen as unstable and untrustworthy, which, like, is the opinion of 90% of my female acquaintanceship, soooo). There is one human character in this book. He is generally incomprehensible to our narrators, to the point where its even difficult as a human reader to get a good grasp on him, and to understand more than tiny snatches of the vast and terrible story he is unable to really tell.
That's the theme of these books – communication and comprehension and incomprehension across vast gaps of understanding. Pushing yourself beyond the constraints of culture to try and try and try to meet a stranger, an other, somewhere in the middle that might be comprehensible to you both. There is so much language play in these books; there are a good half dozen species who talk in various combinations, and not a single one of those combinations is easy or clear. And some of them, like the matrix-brain aliens who speak in a 5x5 grid, are hard as hell.
Anyway, this series is truly an accomplishment, and I'm glad I read it. But like a lot of Cherryh, it's also more intellectually exciting than emotionally exciting. There's a chilliness to her writing, even when she's telling stories about people experiencing strong emotions, and that's on display here.