Cyteen

Rating:
Summary: Dune like
Review: I was struck by this book. Its style was just like frank herbert's later (messiah and onwards) books in the dune series. It is psychological and philosophical. It was slightly tiring, and it took me on average two minutes to a page.

Overall, it was great. Ariane Emory gets murdered early on. She has a replicate of her made. That is the focus of the book. It has very little action, so mabye Dean Koontz or Stephen King fans should opt out.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the Effort
Review: I'm so glad to see all of the Cyteen books in one volume. I originally read them months apart and hadn't realized how much information I missed doing it that way.

Cyteen is typical of Cherryh, a difficult read but worth the effort. It's about growth and change, of cultures and groups and individuals. It's about choices we make and how our choices affect the direction of our lives, and impact others. It's about the dangers of experimenting with human lives, and the unexpectedness of the results. It's a nontraditional love story, about the relationships of people bound to each other by expectations and duty and affection reluctantly and/or mistakenly given. It's about giving people too much power and about psychopathy.

It's about life.

I recommend _40,000_in_Gehenna_ as a follow-up. As well as being a stand-alone story, it explains some of what's happened in _Cyteen_.

Rating:
Summary: SLOW TO IMPULSE
Review: If Cherryh's other merchanter books are at warp speed, this one is definitely at impulse. It explains the mysterious Union in almost excruciating detail. The characters are human and realistic, but the plot is very slow-moving by Cherryh's usual standards. Still worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: Slow, choppy writing style, boring plot
Review: If I could give it a - 0 - star, I would. For two years I've been trying to pick up this book and get past the first 50 pages and can't seem to do it.

There's too much going on in the beginning. No characterization. I could care less about the government or the people in whatever convulated plot Cherryh is trying to call drama. And if anyone could help me out with finding the entertainment in the book, feel free to email me.

Now if you want a real author, read Joan D. Vinge's Snow Queen and Psion series. Now that is drama.

Rating:
Summary: Not for a 20-30 pages a day reader
Review: If your judgement is not clouded by being a big fan of author novels or Merchanter Series, in particular, you will not like this book. The characters are typical for Cherryh's books - not stable in their ideas, illogical, etc. The novel is packed with intrigues, double crossing, triple crossing. Moreover, the book is very slow - never mind the size of 700 pages - it has nothing to do with it, there is just not much happening, in the middle of this novel ,in particular. So, if you just read about an hour a day, you will have to be VERY, VERY patient to finish this novel, and there is not any payoff in the end !! I would not recommend this book to anybody, besides the loyal fans of Cherryh works, and those of you, who are going through the Hugo list.

Rating:
Summary: Cyteen
Review: One of C.J.Cherryh's more complex books which unfortunately I had
to import from the US at great detriment to my bank balance.
The society that Cyteen has developed is completely foreign to
the inhabitents of the companies OR the stations and marks a deep divide in the human psyche.
Earth seems to be completely cut off from contact with the "colonies",who are more and more exerting their independance
and who are experiencing a greater degree of competition from the "vat-bred" workers of Cyteen.
The problems that Earth faces is "faintly" touched on in the Chanure Saga where human ships endeavour to transgress Kif;Shsto;
Tc'a and even fire on Knnn ships,in order to establish a trading
route now being denied them by rebellious systems.
"Finity's End" tries to bring a satisfactory conclusion to the
problem,but I think that another book is neccessary to solve the
problems although I don't how she is going to find the time to write it.

Rating:
Summary: For people who love plot complexity and characterization!
Review: One of the things that I really like about Cherryh is how she manages to create very tight situations about irreconcilable interests--there's dollops and dollops of that in Cyteen--the chains forcefully binding characters just get tighter and tighter until the end. I also love the interrogations (public and private); that's where the real personalities of the characters seem to come out. The characters are well painted, particularly the central pair who both face *real* (as opposed to contrived) identity crises--who are you if you were made to be someone else?

-- Mandos.

Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: Science fiction, political intrigue and chock full of psychological mind games. One of my absolute favorite books. Be warned though, the first 100 pages or so are quite frustrating - you get thrown into a completely foreign world without any explanations as to what's going on. You'll want to just give up on it. But stick with it! It eventually all falls into place and then it's so intriguing and the characters are so real that you never want to put it down. No other book has ever absorbed me so completely.

Rating:
Summary: This is by far the best Cherryh that I have read!
Review: This book gripped me for three days straight. Cherryh has a profound gift for imagining the extraordinary as normal, developing and sustaining characters and their relationships, and offering at once a profoundly disturbing and hopeful vision of a future. I also should add that this work has one of the most tender treatments of same-sex relationships that I have seen in print.

Rating:
Summary: Nature vs Nurture
Review: This engrossing story is a huge study into the old question of what makes us who we are. The most brilliant scientist in the galaxy is murdered and then cloned. But can she be duplicated?
An extremely interesting story where the dialog is all between individuals of genius minds. A whodunit, political, scientific, psychological thriller.
And once again a study of the lonliness of being smarter than everyone else.
Her most thought provoking work.
Guaranteed to satisfy