C.J. Cherryh

[murphy]

That would be frowned upon over here, but i guess there's a lot more room in the states.
Thays a lot of books by the way!

What would be frowned upon? Living alone in a 3 bedroom house? I wasn't always alone, raised three kids here and also took care of my mother before she died. Besides, I have cats and dogs.

 

[AE35Unit]

What would be frowned upon? Living alone in a 3 bedroom house? I wasn't always alone, raised three kids here and also took care of my mother before she died. Besides, I have cats and dogs.

Basically yes. A 3 bedroomed house would be allocated a family,the council wouldn't allow one person to live in it. You would be encouraged to move out.
A bit of a house shortage going on-not helped by all the immigrants coming in wuilly nilly I suppose.

 

[murphy]

Wow. Can they force you to move out of a house that you've purchased?

 

[AE35Unit]

Wow. Can they force you to move out of a house that you've purchased?

I dont know about that-never bought a house nor in tend to. Anyway, this is getting away from the topic so..

 

[Pyan]

AE is talking about council houses let to tenants, Murphy, not privately owned houses.

Can we get back on-topic here, please....

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Interesting the automatic assumption that murphy lived in a rented house. One of those British/American disconnects, I guess. People do rent houses here, but it's more common for a single-family dwelling to be occupied by the homeowner. Lots of people rent apartments, though.

Anyway, that's not the point of this post. I want to say that anyone who thinks there should be more discussions about Cherryh might like to jump into these threads that are currently languishing for lack of responses:

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/41985-downbelow-station-by-cj-cherryh.html

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/44034-faded-sun-trilogy-cj-cherryh.html

 

[Fried Egg]

Most readers seem to think that Serpent's Reach is one of her lesser efforts, but it's one of my favorites, too. It's nice to know that I have company.

It's interesting you should say that as I'm about half way through "Serpent's Reach" right now and I'm finding it a bit of a slog to be honest. And this is hot on the heals of reading "Cuckoo's Egg" which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I wanted to read a couple of stand alone stories of hers in order to see how I got on with her writing before deciding whether to embark on one of her series. Hopefully this story will pick up a bit because if I finish on a bad note, I might not get around to reading anything else of hers for a while...

 

[iansales]

I actually preferred Serpent's Reach to Cuckoo's Egg. I thought the latter wasn't as original - I kept on thinking of James Clavell's Shogun while I was reading it.

I like Angel with a Sword a lot - I even have the seven "mosaic novels" by various hands which follow on from it.

I also have all of Cherryh's Foreigner novels up to the current one, but I've only read the first. The longer the series gets, the more it looks like it's going to be hard work to read them...

 

[Fried Egg]

iansales

I actually preferred Serpent's Reach to Cuckoo's Egg. I thought the latter wasn't as original - I kept on thinking of James Clavell's Shogun while I was reading it.

I haven't read "Shogun" so I can't comment on that.

"Serpent's Reach" is picking up a bit so I shall see how it ends. It did seem to take an excessively long time to setup the actual story which only began once she got to Istra. Before that many pages were spent establishing Raen's background and detailing the complex social and political system and the human relationship to the native intelligent species.

Judging only from these two stories it does seem that she places a lot of emphasis on world building and creating detailed alien societies. Almost seemed a waste in "Cuckoo's Egg" to go to such effort only to do so little with it. Maybe that's why she predominately writes series?

 

[iansales]

Surely you've seen the Shogun miniseries? Or am I showing my age?

Christopher Rowley's The War for Eternity is very similar to Serpent's Reach, although not as well-written. And it has a bizarre ending.

Many of Cherryh's books are stand-alones, but are set in the same universe - Union/Alliance. So they're not actually series. A couple of her early works were trilogies - the Chronicles of Morgaine, the Faded Sun - but it's only in the past decade she's started writing proper series novel. And some of them only consist of a pair of books - Rider at the Gate and Cloud's Rider; Hammerfall and Forge of Heaven...

 

[Fried Egg]

Iansales

Surely you've seen the Shogun miniseries? Or am I showing my age?

Well, I looked it up and apparently it's from 1980 so...yes you are showing your age (or I'm showing mine)!

Many of Cherryh's books are stand-alones, but are set in the same universe - Union/Alliance. So they're not actually series.

But they would still benefit from shared world building I imagine?

 

[iansales]

There's a chronology of Cherryh's universe on her web site - see here. She's not the first to set her fiction in a single universe - most of Heinlein's is in his Future History; and Asimov tried to tie all his up into one humungous mess.

 

[Fried Egg]

oh, I'm not criticising her for it. Only saying that it seems a waste going to all that effort doing detailed world building for a single novel.

 

[Connavar]

Actually reading Faded Sun what made me a fan of her writing was the detailed world building in just a single novel. The alien cultures too.

She has very loose take on single universe too, most her series books appear like stand alone except the new series book Ian mentioned.

 

[Fried Egg]

To be honest, detailed world building is not really what I'm looking for in a novel these days.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Only saying that it seems a waste going to all that effort doing detailed world building for a single novel.

Well, from reading her books, I think it may be her ruling passion: something she has to do, something she takes joy in -- of course it takes effort, but the effort itself may be rewarding, and when the idea for a new world or species comes into her mind, she's probably eager to explore it.

There are some of her worlds I would like to revisit -- I keep hoping, I keep hoping -- and I do feel there are possibilities going to waste, but if she's following her bliss I don't think you could call any of it a wasted effort.

Besides, sometimes when it seems that she's moved on for good, she does go back to a previous setting. I thought the Morgaine books had ended as a trilogy, and years later she wrote a fourth book, and ended it in such a way that there was plenty of scope for more.

 

[iansales]

Besides, sometimes when it seems that she's moved on for good, she does go back to a previous setting. I thought the Morgaine books had ended as a trilogy, and years later she wrote a fourth book, and ended it in such a way that there was plenty of scope for more.

She recently returned to Cyteen as well, although that's set in the Union/Alliance.

 

[murphy]

Well, from reading her books, I think it may be her ruling passion: something she has to do, something she takes joy in -- of course it takes effort, but the effort itself may be rewarding, and when the idea for a new world or species comes into her mind, she's probably eager to explore it.

There are some of her worlds I would like to revisit -- I keep hoping, I keep hoping -- and I do feel there are possibilities going to waste, but if she's following her bliss I don't think you could call any of it a wasted effort.

Besides, sometimes when it seems that she's moved on for good, she does go back to a previous setting. I thought the Morgaine books had ended as a trilogy, and years later she wrote a fourth book, and ended it in such a way that there was plenty of scope for more.

I recently reread Cloud's Rider and Rider at the Gate and felt that a third book would make a nice trilogy and conclude some plot points that were left hanging. There are very few Cherryh books I didn't care for, the Rusalka books and Faery in Shadow. I just couldn't get into Faery at all.

 

[Connavar]

Considering the CJC book i'm reading at the moment isnt my avatar pretty funny seeing how it looks like a Mri warrior

Maybe thats why i thought Kesrith was so interesting book cause i had an affection for their culture.

I'm feeling the urge to read more of work and i have to finish the series before i can read another of her work. Down Below Station was pretty slow going, i'm going for her science fantasy next.

 

[murphy]

Considering the CJC book i'm reading at the moment isnt my avatar pretty funny seeing how it looks like a Mri warrior

Maybe thats why i thought Kesrith was so interesting book cause i had an affection for their culture.

I'm feeling the urge to read more of work and i have to finish the series before i can read another of her work. Down Below Station was pretty slow going, i'm going for her science fantasy next.

Which one?