A Thousand Words for Stranger

Rating:
Summary: A charming and original work - A must read!
Review: "A Thousand Words for Stranger" is a truly delightful book and the beginning of an enthralling series. The Ms. Czerneda's creation is rich with social, political, historical, and mystical tensions. Her universe teems with original and unique aliens and cultures. Her characters live: sharing with us their perspectives, longings, discoveries and struggles. Their depth of development is refreshingly detailed and inspiringly human.
At turns humorous and suspenseful; I found couldn't put it or it's sequels down. I've been an avid SF reader for 30 years. It's wonderful to be surprised by such a vibrant new talent!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent debut novel
Review: "A Thousand Words for Stranger" is one of the best debut novels I've ever read.

The plot might be somewhat cliched -- Sira doesn't remember her past, and wakes up in danger of her life. Not knowing what's happening, she forms an uneasy alliance with a human man -- when she's not totally human, but a mutant with inborn telepathic and telekinetic ability.

Thing is, it doesn't stay cliched long, as Sira is a fighter. She doesn't accept much easily, which is why her growing romance with the man, Jason Morgan, is so troublesome to her. She wonders if her "real" self (the one before the memory block) would still like Morgan, and wonders what she was doing before her memory was blocked.

Yet she likes Morgan, and soon, it turns to more than like. Morgan respects her, likes her, finally loves her . . . and they both decide to figure out what happened to her along the way.

When she finds a member of her clan, Barac sud Sarc, and demands an explanation, things _really_ start to get interesting.

The pacing is medium at best, but the medium-to-slow pace is an advantage, here. It's a character study, laid against an alien backdrop, with more than a bit of romance to leaven the mix.

Still probably Czerneda's best overall novel to date. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent debut novel
Review: "A Thousand Words for Stranger" is one of the best debut novels I've ever read.

The plot might be somewhat cliched -- Sira doesn't remember her past, and wakes up in danger of her life. Not knowing what's happening, she forms an uneasy alliance with a human man -- when she's not totally human, but a mutant with inborn telepathic and telekinetic ability.

Thing is, it doesn't stay cliched long, as Sira is a fighter. She doesn't accept much easily, which is why her growing romance with the man, Jason Morgan, is so troublesome to her. She wonders if her "real" self (the one before the memory block) would still like Morgan, and wonders what she was doing before her memory was blocked.

Yet she likes Morgan, and soon, it turns to more than like. Morgan respects her, likes her, finally loves her . . . and they both decide to figure out what happened to her along the way.

When she finds a member of her clan, Barac sud Sarc, and demands an explanation, things _really_ start to get interesting.

The pacing is medium at best, but the medium-to-slow pace is an advantage, here. It's a character study, laid against an alien backdrop, with more than a bit of romance to leaven the mix.

Still probably Czerneda's best overall novel to date. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: A charming and original work - A must read!
Review: "A Thousand Words for Stranger" is a truly delightful book and the beginning of an enthralling series. The Ms. Czerneda's creation is rich with social, political, historical, and mystical tensions. Her universe teems with original and unique aliens and cultures. Her characters live: sharing with us their perspectives, longings, discoveries and struggles. Their depth of development is refreshingly detailed and inspiringly human.
At turns humorous and suspenseful; I found couldn't put it or it's sequels down. I've been an avid SF reader for 30 years. It's wonderful to be surprised by such a vibrant new talent!

Rating:
Summary: A charming and original work - A must read!
Review: "A Thousand Words for Stranger" is a truly delightful book and the beginning of an enthralling series. The Ms. Czerneda's creation is rich with social, political, historical, and mystical tensions. Her universe teems with original and unique aliens and cultures. Her characters live: sharing with us their perspectives, longings, discoveries and struggles. Their depth of development is refreshingly detailed and inspiringly human.
At turns humorous and suspenseful; I found couldn't put it or it's sequels down. I've been an avid SF reader for 30 years. It's wonderful to be surprised by such a vibrant new talent!

Rating:
Summary: Questions and Wonder
Review: "A Thousand Words For Stranger" left me seething with questions and filled with wonder. The main questions is "Did anyone read this book before it was published?" Clearly not.
The wonder is "Why would anyone publish this book?" The characters have all the flavor and life of cardboard at the bottom of a tomato crate. The plot fails engage even the most determined reader (I tried, really, but I had to beat myself with
a stick to finish it.) The best thing about this book (other than
it's modest length) was the author's last name. I liked that.

Rating:
Summary: Alone In a World Not Her Own
Review: A Thousand Words for Stranger is the first novel in the Trade Pact Universe. The Clan are not human, but appear so to others. They are said to be powerful telepaths. While not members of the Trade Pact, some live within Trade Pact space.

In this novel, a Trade Pact enforcer, P'tr wit 'Whix, is following a Clansman and his companion in the Auord shipcity when six assailants attack. The Clansman kills or seriously injures four of the assailants and is holding off the last two when someone interrupts the proceedings with a blast globe. The concussion takes out the other two attackers and renders the Clansman unconscious. Meanwhile, his companion has run away. Then the Port Authority corpsmen arrive and shortly thereafter 'Whix's backup, Constable Terk.

She is lost, alone, and amnesic in a strange shipcity when she finds Jason Morgan, follows him to ask for help, and is given some local currency and sent on her way. Unfortunately, her way is into the hands of labor recruiters -- slavers -- and into their warehouse. They have drugged her, but it wears off early. She tries to escape, only to be quickly caught again by the recruiter captain. She uses the only thing she knows, Morgan's name and ship, to get the captain's attention. He is interested, but first has her sent to be tested for telepathy.

Barac sud Sarc, First Scout, Third Level Adept of the Clan, awakes to find himself in the temporary custody of Pact Enforcers, lead by Commander Lydis Bowman. Barac tells the Enforcers as little as possible, but learns that the assailants wore mind-shields, so they knew that Barac is Clan. He is also informed that the Enforcers are investigating the murder of a Clansman, about which Barac already knows, for the murdered man is his brother, Kurr.

This novel is a mixed genre tale, mixing romance and mystery in a SF setting, and the author handles it quite well. This first novel starts off slowly but builds its pace at the end. Moreover, the series per se is first class.

Highly recommended for Czerneda fans and anyone who enjoys SF mysteries with a touch of romance.

Rating:
Summary: Alone In a World Not Her Own
Review: A Thousand Words for Stranger is the first novel in the Trade Pact Universe. The Clan are not human, but appear so to others. They are said to be powerful telepaths. While not members of the Trade Pact, some live within Trade Pact space.

In this novel, a Trade Pact enforcer, P'tr wit 'Whix, is following a Clansman and his companion in the Auord shipcity when six assailants attack. The Clansman kills or seriously injures four of the assailants and is holding off the last two when someone interrupts the proceedings with a blast globe. The concussion takes out the other two attackers and renders the Clansman unconscious. Meanwhile, his companion has run away. Then the Port Authority corpsmen arrive and shortly thereafter 'Whix's backup, Constable Terk.

She is lost, alone, and amnesic in a strange shipcity when she finds Jason Morgan, follows him to ask for help, and is given some local currency and sent on her way. Unfortunately, her way is into the hands of labor recruiters -- slavers -- and into their warehouse. They have drugged her, but it wears off early. She tries to escape, only to be quickly caught again by the recruiter captain. She uses the only thing she knows, Morgan's name and ship, to get the captain's attention. He is interested, but first has her sent to be tested for telepathy.

Barac sud Sarc, First Scout, Third Level Adept of the Clan, awakes to find himself in the temporary custody of Pact Enforcers, lead by Commander Lydis Bowman. Barac tells the Enforcers as little as possible, but learns that the assailants wore mind-shields, so they knew that Barac is Clan. He is also informed that the Enforcers are investigating the murder of a Clansman, about which Barac already knows, for the murdered man is his brother, Kurr.

This novel is a mixed genre tale, mixing romance and mystery in a SF setting, and the author handles it quite well. This first novel starts off slowly but builds its pace at the end. Moreover, the series per se is first class.

Highly recommended for Czerneda fans and anyone who enjoys SF mysteries with a touch of romance.

Rating:
Summary: An engrossing read
Review: Admittedly, science-fiction is not my genre of choice (I prefer fantasy). Because of this and the detailed universe the author offers in the beginning of the book, it took me awhile to get through the first five chapters or so.

I finished the rest of the book in the space of two days. It was nigh impossible to put down. Czerneda has a strong grasp on the concept of moving characters with plots, with a good dose of politics and a curveball or two in the plot thrown in for good measure.

This book is a pleasure to read. I highly recommend it to anyone who's willing to take a vacation from reality for a day or two.

Rating:
Summary: The Kick Inside
Review: Among the many species of the author's "Trade Pact" universe are a race of telepaths, the Clan, who have the ability to know all about each other; but they've managed to create a culture in which, instead, they are strangers to each other. And, as you'll discover, the main reason why this is so is their spiderlike mating ritual.

The book has a romantic hum to it (this is the kind of stuff that probably drew you to science fiction in the first place) and Czerneda will keep you awake reading late at night, as she displays her conflicted Clansters against a multispecies backdrop (Huido the alien restauranteur is a creation fans of Jack Vance and Mike Resnick will salute) that includes, of course, humans.

Czerneda proves herself the master of complex plotlines. Her heroine, the amnesiac telepath Sira (and maybe she's the best telepathic character since James Schmitz's Telzey Amberdon) has a compulsion to hook up with the human trader, who Czerneda has named Captain (Jason) _Morgan_ (yes, Czerneda has quite a sense of humor and doesn't fear to display it), who is himself not without telepathic abilities, in hopes that he can help restore her shattered memories.

Czerneda propels Sira's quest along, often recklessly, but she never drops the reins. The author's technique is clever. What Sira experiences directly she tells us in the first-person narratives, and what she doesn't is told in third-person "interludes" tacked on to the ends of chapters. As the characters drift in and out of Sira's POV, they leave one narrative and pop up in the other. And the telepaths do have a way of popping up!

Julie Czerneda, like Catherine Asaro (of the superb Skolian Empire series), puts the fun back into a genre that's grown more than somewhat cold and antiseptic in recent years. I'm glad she's joined the party.