Yvgenie

Rating:
Summary: Yvgenie: Death-in-Life
Review: A stupendous achievement! Cherryh brings her Rusalka series a step further with this fantasy novel, evoking mythological roots that nurture us all. The premise of wizardry being a matter of mere wishes in the pre-Christian Russia is the precursor to the practice of Christian prayer. If a wizard is forbidden to wish for anything for himself, that is the corrolary to the Lord's Prayer. Wizard emerges as sacred priest, which in fact the witches and artist's were in the pre-Christian world. Sasha at last finds the reward he deserves for all his self-denying loyalty to his friends Pyetr and Eveshka.
The dual nature of Pyetr's legitimate daughter's lover, (uncorrupted youth and evil, but redeemable spector) leads us to a deep understanding of the nature of love and of life--mortality consists not of the foreknowlege of death in the future, but the awareness that death is always with us, even as we breathe.
It also resonates on the Ressurection: love and loyalty engender rebirth.
The plot comes to a delightful conclusion, nimbly assisted by ubiquitous and adorable vodka-guzzling Yard Thing, Babi. (I seem to remember being a House Thing at my Grandmother's, called "Hoppy".)
Although the characters in the trilogy, "Rusalka", "Chernevog", and "Yvgenie" seem exotic, being wizards, ghosts, and former ghosts, they serve as a reflection of our own deeper nature: Eveshka has no powers any ordinary woman does not have. Having been alive once, then a ghost, then alive again, she is simply more aware of her connection with what Clarissa Pinkola Estes terms 'Veshka's "life-death-life nature", in Estes' wonderful treatist, "Women Who Run With the Wolves." Moreover, when Eveshka had been a ghost, in her rusalka mode, she was the classic study of an anorexic maiden, with the same parental influences that bring about anorexia in a real child.
The fact that Pyetr had the courage to face the dangers inherent in living with a rusalka and in befriending a wizard demonstrates that he earned the right to enjoy life as the head of his somewhat unconventional household.
Cherryh is a great lady, and a great writer. There is plenty of room left here for a sequel: "Et tu," Hwiiur?

Rating:
Summary: a uniquely written fantasy
Review: C.J. Cherryh's style of writing in Yvgenie (and in the first two books, Rusalka and Chernevog) is unique. It might be off-putting at first, but you get into the structure really quickly, and the style works well with the story. I liked this series, especially Yvgenie, because I liked seeing Sascha as a mature wizard. Not only the structure is unique; Cherryh's take on magic and wizardry is also. It's a refreshing break from the usual book-and-spells magic found in most other fantasies. All in all, a fun, worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: a uniquely written fantasy
Review: C.J. Cherryh's style of writing in Yvgenie (and in the first two books, Rusalka and Chernevog) is unique. It might be off-putting at first, but you get into the structure really quickly, and the style works well with the story. I liked this series, especially Yvgenie, because I liked seeing Sascha as a mature wizard. Not only the structure is unique; Cherryh's take on magic and wizardry is also. It's a refreshing break from the usual book-and-spells magic found in most other fantasies. All in all, a fun, worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: The best in the series; readable but still flawed
Review: Chernevog, Rusalka, and Yvgenie are the greatest books. I enjoyed the atmosphere. An old-time russian fairy-tale. This series pulled together bits of all folklore I know, and even taught me some things I wasn't aware of. The characters are likeable, even the truely evil ones. You can imagine where they are coming from and why it is they are acting like they are. Perhaps it is a bit predictable, but it's a fairy-tale.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome series!
Review: Chernevog, Rusalka, and Yvgenie are the greatest books. I enjoyed the atmosphere. An old-time russian fairy-tale. This series pulled together bits of all folklore I know, and even taught me some things I wasn't aware of. The characters are likeable, even the truely evil ones. You can imagine where they are coming from and why it is they are acting like they are. Perhaps it is a bit predictable, but it's a fairy-tale.

Rating:
Summary: The best in the series; readable but still flawed
Review: The essential premise of this series, set in a medieval Russia-like world, is that wizards can do magic just by wishing. This sounds easy, but in fact it's the source of a lot of problems: a casual impulse or a child's unconsidered desire can have unforeseen, possibly disastrous consequences. In this third and best installment, Ilyana, the daughter of a non-magical man and a mother who is both a wizard and a revenant from the dead, tries to deal with old, dangerous magic and new magical threats as well as more traditional teenage problems. The family stuff -- not only between Ilyana and her parents but involving her grandparents' generation as well -- is sometimes a little too much like a talk show. The plot here also has a nebulous quality. It's much more comprehensible than the prequel, Chernevog, which was utterly confusing at times. Still, though, the exact nature of the challenges facing the characters is often unclear and the final outcome is hard to understand. Readers don't need everything spelled out for them, but they do need a little more clarity than this novel offers. Still, I found all the characters appealing (except for the mother, Eveshka) and the magical creatures are particularly well done. This book is better than the others in the series in that the characters do less apparently pointless jumping at shadows (though there's still some), more people and places are introduced, and the plot makes a little more sense.

Rating:
Summary: A good light read
Review: This is the first book in the series I have read, and I found it immediately engrossing. It was nice to see a teenage character who actually had flaws. I was a bit disappointed by the ending. The final conflict was confusing.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: Yvgenie is the third book in a difficult to follow, but eminently enjoyable series. it is awfully nice to get to enter the world of Sasha and Pieter again, and to try to wade through Cherryh's complicated prose, (it really is worth the you spend to try to understand it.) The way that Cherryh approaches magic in this book is really quite fascinating, and extremely complicated. When a wish that you make can defy all time constraints and work in the past, or the future, things are bound to get difficult. Well, I am not going to try to explain everything in this short review. Let me just say that if you are looking for a book that will get you thinking, or just a good time, don't pass this one up.