C J Cherryh - Regenesis

CJ is on my buy-on-sight list. I love her Science Fiction - but not her fantasy that much. I thought that the Morgaine series was great; I liked some of her faery stand-alones; didn't much like Rusalska, not her current Fortress series.
In Science Fiction she has three major series: The Alliance-Union Universe (to which Regenesis belongs); The Foreigner Universe (ongoing); The Chanur novels ('cats-in-space').

Her major strength, for me, has always been the world-building. One of the major attractions in the Alliance-Union setting, for example, is seeing how the situation between Earth/alliance/Union plays out and then, with Cyteen and its sequel Regenesis, what Union's azi-descended society is going to look like. More on that later.

The Chanur novels arguably fit into the Alliance-Union universe with all sorts of troubles being stired up by the arrival into a relatively stable Compact of multiple races (Chanur and het fellow cats, the Mahendo'sat, the Kif, the Shto, and the methane breathers). However beyong being the initial impetus (and occasional kick along the way) the details on the origin of humans (or just the one, really) are irrelevant and could be anywhere.

Similarly, it's a good bet that the lost colony in the Foreigner universe came from Alliance. Still, if they do it's not too important (as yet: that series is still going with the first on the fourth trilogy - Conspirator - on the way). This series also has excellent aliens: better even than those in the Mote.

There are even clues that Morgaine may have come from Alliance-Union.

Some find her novels to be formulaic; I can see why but have to say the formula works very well for me, and obviously does for all the other CJ fans out there. My personal opinion is that the formla applies in the small, in similar characters across books, but not to the larger arcs across series. Whatever, I'm happy with it.

Come to think of it, I even like the Faded Sun trilogy which not all the CJ fans do. I must be biased.

So, Regenesis. This is good Cherryh, but not geat. It carries forwayds the story of Ari Emory from Cyteen, and is very effective on a couple of levels: the further development of Ari, and it's a damn good political action adventure. It does not carry the larger arc much further: the investigation and possibly resolution of the Gehenna problems don't really get a mention; azi-descended society takes a relatively small place with no resolution or even advancement beyond a throw-away remark that Ari thinks there may be problems.

On the personal, character-based level there is lots of good stuff - the Warricks get a really good work-out, the Nyes are dissected, Ari herself advances, lots of history is looked at with a new eye and fresh information, and so on. Exciting stuff happens and is dealt with is exciting ways - there's absolutely nothing to dislike and very very much to enjoy!

So it's a really good book.

But it's not the book it could have been. As I said the larger elements are missing; it's mostly backward looking in that context with very lttle about the future. It's a good story, and if the series continues and looks at those issues then it will be a stroke of genius - a change of pace between the complex issues brought up in Cyteen and continued in the putative next one.

Will that book appear? I'm not sure. Sadly CJ is - as are we all - getting older. I can see a change of focus in the Foreigner series: it's getting smaller and more personal. I think that she's drawing back from the 'bigger' issues.

I think that this is a possibly a good thing. As you get older your priorities, the things you care about, change. My experience is that the personal small-scale stuff remains interesting and that wild flights of imagination - while amusing - are less imprtant. May be she's following that pattern and staying true to herself by writing about what she's interested in and cares about. If she is following that pattern, the alternative is to force herself to write about things she doesn't care about so much and isn't too interested in developing.

That way lies the brain-eater, and if CJ is avoiding that then I, for one, am very grateful to her and wish her many many more years of writing about what she's truely interested in. She's still truely got my attention.