Wow. This was an incredible book. I don't know that my review will even come close to doing the concepts and ideas justice. I had some initial trepidation at picking this one up: it's huge (dictionary huge), Cherryh's works tend to have strange grammatical structure, and the last book I read of hers was a bit of a slog (Downbelow Station). That all being said, this was an awesome book and I was disappointed when it finished.
In the most simplified review, 17 year old Justin Warrick makes a bad judgement call when he sends his friend and companion Grant fleeing to the outskirts of Reseune because the powerful Ariane Emory was going to take him away. This has political, personal and internal ramifications that will last for the next 20 years. Justin is sexually blackmailed by Ari and when his father Jordan finds out, Jordan confronts Ari and somewhere in there Ari is found dead.
Jordan is exiled under the strictest security arrangements, while Justin and Grant are held hostage and suspicion for the next 20 years. Justin is a mental basket case and he never quite figures out who wants what from him. Resenue decides to clone a replicate of Ariane Emory and return her to a position of galactic power and Justin's future becomes intertwined with her fate once again. This is a story of psychological proportions, of mental twists and turns and layers and layers of subterfuge and finesse.
The book wasn't with out it's hiccups - initially I had trouble figuring out the nomenclature of the different levels of humans. There are CIT humans: basically full citizens, often referring to "natural born" man (even if they did come out of a tank) and there are the CIT companions, security forces and menial laborers, the azi. Humans, but somehow through "tapes" they are made, not natural. Some azi do reach CIT status, but not all of them are destined to. And then there was all the psychological terminology that accompanied all of this.
I also had trouble with Justin's plot. He was abused at age 17 by a psych master (as they called Ariane), but her death prevented the her work on him from being completed. I can understand a young man's anguish at having his father ripped from him after the trauma, but he never gets over it. For the next 20 years he pines for his father - the people and the story around him grows, but it's like he's stagnant. Ari 2 figures out what wrong with him, but even by the close of the story I still felt like Justin just hadn't gone anywhere.
And the politics in the book lost me on more than one occasion. There were galactic politics and Resenue politics and the two became so entwined I had a bit of trouble following it. I confess that at times when there was exposition I would skip it because it would be discussed again in about 20 pages.
This book won the Hugo in 1989. I have a feeling it blew the competition out of the water.
In the most simplified review, 17 year old Justin Warrick makes a bad judgement call when he sends his friend and companion Grant fleeing to the outskirts of Reseune because the powerful Ariane Emory was going to take him away. This has political, personal and internal ramifications that will last for the next 20 years. Justin is sexually blackmailed by Ari and when his father Jordan finds out, Jordan confronts Ari and somewhere in there Ari is found dead.
Jordan is exiled under the strictest security arrangements, while Justin and Grant are held hostage and suspicion for the next 20 years. Justin is a mental basket case and he never quite figures out who wants what from him. Resenue decides to clone a replicate of Ariane Emory and return her to a position of galactic power and Justin's future becomes intertwined with her fate once again. This is a story of psychological proportions, of mental twists and turns and layers and layers of subterfuge and finesse.
The book wasn't with out it's hiccups - initially I had trouble figuring out the nomenclature of the different levels of humans. There are CIT humans: basically full citizens, often referring to "natural born" man (even if they did come out of a tank) and there are the CIT companions, security forces and menial laborers, the azi. Humans, but somehow through "tapes" they are made, not natural. Some azi do reach CIT status, but not all of them are destined to. And then there was all the psychological terminology that accompanied all of this.
I also had trouble with Justin's plot. He was abused at age 17 by a psych master (as they called Ariane), but her death prevented the her work on him from being completed. I can understand a young man's anguish at having his father ripped from him after the trauma, but he never gets over it. For the next 20 years he pines for his father - the people and the story around him grows, but it's like he's stagnant. Ari 2 figures out what wrong with him, but even by the close of the story I still felt like Justin just hadn't gone anywhere.
And the politics in the book lost me on more than one occasion. There were galactic politics and Resenue politics and the two became so entwined I had a bit of trouble following it. I confess that at times when there was exposition I would skip it because it would be discussed again in about 20 pages.
This book won the Hugo in 1989. I have a feeling it blew the competition out of the water.
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