Jason's Reviews > Chanur's Homecoming

Boy, am I gods-rotted tired of the Chanur books. I sort of liked them at the beginning. At some places, I really liked them. But not in enough places. The most enjoyable sections of the series are when the author actually slows down a bit and allows her story to breathe, permitting the reader to contemplate what's happening. But that happens so rarely, that by the time I was done this one, I had had more than enough.

If you've gotten this far in the series, you'll no doubt read this 4th book, and you'll know exactly what to expect. There is nothing new here, nothing surprising, no shocks or twists or changes of pace. It's just more of the same, and the same, and the same. In fact, although this is a continuing series, I have a hunch that a person could read these books in absolutely random order, and they wouldn't notice the difference. Yes, the plot movements are that arbitrary.

Once again, the pace is very quick. You've got crosses and double-crosses and triple-crosses, and god bless you if you have any sort of firm handle on what those double and triple crosses are. You've got characters shouting commands at each other, you've got jumps from one star system to the next, you've got Pyanfar demanding from Jik, and from Goldtooth, and from Skukkuk, and from Tully, and from whoever, "What is the gods-rotted truth? Tell me what you know!" And that person will respond very dramatically in incomprehensible pidgin English, and Pyanfar will act as if she understood, and she'll have some interior monologue about how bad things are getting, and how double and triple-crossed she feels, and then she'll call up the bridge and demand something or other, and order them to set course for somewhere or other, and off they are to the next star system, and the people on the bridge are mumbling about how bad everything has gotten and how things are so damned complicated now, and meanwhile the reader is left wondering what the hell they just missed. Then, rinse and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. For 400 pages. The pace is quick, yes, but in a strangely static way - there's lots of action, but at the same time, nothing is happening. There are no pauses, no mountains or valleys, no moments of reflection, just a full-throttle monotonous stream of busy people doing busy things for only vaguely comprehensible reasons. It's like someone yelling at you in broken English from a stationary bike for four hours. It's just too much excitement for me.

And the unfortunate thing is that there are some really compelling themes running through here. The feminist angle is still interesting, although it gets less mileage in this book than in the previous ones. The repeated points about the dangers of small-minded provincial politics are well-taken. But mostly, this is a series of missed opportunities. The mysterious alien k'nnn, ch'i, and what-have-you? The book does nothing with them. The even more mysterious army of humans coming en masse from the other side of the galaxy? The book does nothing with them either. None of that, none of the plot, seems to be the point. Rather, for Cherryh, the point seems to be the pace itself, the non-stop action, the craziness. But with so much fast somethingness going on, and so little regard to rhythm and clarity, the whole enterprise, instead of grabbing the reader, just sort of sits there, vague and bloodless.

I'm sure I could take the book on my lap like a Rabbi with his Torah and reread every paragraph six times over until I grasp all the details and plot points and implications that Cherryh has, for some reason, deliberately kept obscure. But this isn't the Torah, and it isn't worth anyone's time to do that. There are far better space operas out there, with far more immersive worlds and characters and plots, with themes handled far more delicately and interestingly, that I would only recommend this series to anyone who is a C. J. Cherryh completist. Or, if you're just discovering Cherryh, go read Downbelow Station instead- now that's an example of a novel in which Cherryh's idiosyncratic style works, brilliantly.