Julie E. Czerneda

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Title: A Thousand Words for Stranger
Series: Trade Pact #1, Clan Chronicles #4
Author: Julie Czerneda
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 464
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

A young woman comes to show more consciousness without her memory but with something inside insisting she get to the spaceport and get off whatever world she is on. After several mishaps, kidnapping by slavers being one, she gets on board Jason Morgan's ship and signs on as a crew. Without her memory, Jason chooses the name Sira Morgan for her.

What Sira doesn't know is that The Clan, a race of humanoids with telepathic powers, has contacted and contracted Jason to bring Sira to a particular destination. Morgan has had dealings with the Clan before and even though fully human has some small telepathic power himself. Due to his previous dealings, Morgan doesn't feel it is safe to deliver Sira to anyone, so he keeps an eye on her and reveals what little he knows to Sira.

Sira is captured by a rogue Clan member who wants to marry her, mind wipe her and then impregnate her so his offspring will have her ultrapowerful Clan power. Morgan rescues her and brings Sira's sister and guardian into the picture. They deliver Sira to the Clan Elders and Sira's father reveals that everything was all according to Sira's own plan and that Sira Morgan will die when Sira di Sarc regains her memory. Sira Morgan has fallen in love with Jason and he with her. He comes up with a plan to rescue her but Sira recovers her memories and realizes everything, even her own plans, were a ruse by her father to brainwipe her and use her like an auction piece to gain power for his own House.

Somehow Sira and Morgan escape without alerting any of the Clan that Sira has recovered her memory but not reverted back to Sira di Sarc. She and Morgan are now on the run and just one mis-step away from disaster and annihilation.

My Thoughts:

For some time I was on a real kick with the Liaden Universe books by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. I had to stop reading them due to some of the moral content but I enjoyed them as they scratched that Jane Austen in Space itch that I had but didn't know I had until I read those books. This book had that exact same vibe. So much so that I went and did a little investigating, thinking that maybe Czerneda had got the idea from the other duo. Turns out this book came out the year BEFORE any of the Liaden books came out (as far as I can tell).

So to set the stage, this IS a romance book. However, unlike that horrible, horrible woman Lindsay Buroker, this is definitely more Austinesque in the romance. It is NOT about beating hearts, or smoldering glances, or tight pants or revealing of various body parts. Nor is it like a Janette Oak book that is nothing but feelings dumped like a hogshead of maple syrup all over the reader. In other words, this is romance that I, the manliest man I happen to know, like. Considing that someone once asked me if it was true that I beat Chuck Norris at Arm Wrestling, I think I'm pretty bleeping manly!

There were times I was a bit frustrated with Sira's memory loss and how she reacted but that was strictly because I had more information than she did. It's always easier to tell somebody what to do when you have more information than them. The other thing that left me a bit confuzzled was just WHAT the Clan actually is. It is never spelled out and little hints are given here and there about their history. Knowing, or not, doesn't affect the story as far as I can tell, just one of those things that I as a reader “want”.

When I started this I was not sure what I was going to get. Thankfully, the book and I hit it off right from the start and I enjoyed my time reading this. Looking forward to the rest of the trilogy. There is a prequel trilogy, the Clan Chronicles but since they were published AFTER this Trade Pact trilogy I plan on reading everything in publication order.

So remember, Telepathic Jane Austen, In Space and you should be good to go!

★★★★☆ show less

{Standalone, fantasy}

Magic has been lost to the world except in the carefully isolated land of Tananen which is guarded by an entity her people call the Deathless Goddess or the Lady. Only some women can hear the Lady and speak Her Words and they safeguard them for the mages in case they are lost. Only some men can write those words with intent and create magic but the Deathless Goddess exacts a price with each creation and mages age a little each time. Maleonarial, the foremost amongst show more them, does not enjoy seeing loved friends and young students age and die before their times and, twelve years before the beginning of the book, left the mage school at Alden to wander Tananen and find a way to avoid that cost.

Now there is a magic that works in a different way, creating abominations and the hermit mage must be found in time to stop it doing more harm.

Czernada has created a cohesive world with hold lords in charge of holds with other towns and villages under them. Hold Daughters are the representatives of the Lady; there is one Daughter to each hold but she has many other ladies in the hold who can also hear the Lady. Similarly, each town and village has their own daughters who report back to their own Hold Daughter as necessary.

This one made me cry; she writes the mother-child bond beautifully, not with sentimentality but with a no-nonsense love. Absolutely spot on.

Leksand ducked his head, giving his mother a worried glance. Kait carefully didn’t smile. “Go on, then,” she advised her son. “It’ll be a longer trip if you don’t talk.”

Some issues with half sentences, but I can live with that. And while I love the tattoo-like curlicues they unfortunately obscure several of the words in my library e-book.

5***** show less

I dived into the audiobook version of "A Thousand Words For Stranger" knowing nothing about it except that I loved the title.

The start took my breathe away. I was dropped into a complex, planet-spanning, multi-species universe where neither I nor the main character knew what was going on other than that she was in danger and had to get off-world fast. I felt the same excitement that I did going to "Star Wars" in 1977 when everything was new and unknown but it felt solid and it moved fast and show more I really wanted to learn more.

What followed was a romp across strange worlds, including a gigantic shopping mall in space (no, it wasn't called DS9), a swamp city with venomous priests and a city where the buildings had no doors, with the main character, Sira being pursued by pirates, Trade Pack Enforcers and members of a telepathic, teleporting race call The Clan.

Sira's memory has been suppressed so she doesn't know who she is or why so many people are after her. She takes refuge with charismatic Captain Morgan, who runs his own spacecraft single-handed and trades across Pact Space.

The relationship between Sira and Captain Morgan is built skillfully and manages to provide the emotional drive of the story as well as being central to the mystery surrounding Sira and her loss of memory.

Some of the secondary characters are beautifully drawn, almost to the point of distracting me. For example, the book opens from the point of view of a Trade Pact Enforcer from an avian species. I loved being inside his head but I didn't get to go there again after the first few chapters.

There was a slight hiatus about eighty per cent through when a major crisis is spectacularly resolved but none of the hinted at but not explained issues around Sira have been dealt with. This made the set-up of the ending a little too dense in content that could have been shared earlier.

These are minor niggles. I spent most of my time cheering for the good guys, hissing at the bad guys and wondering if what I thought I'd figured out would actually turn out to be the explanation (The answer: mostly yes but with a few surprises- I think this is the perfect mix).

After I'd cheered at the end, both because it was a good ending and a great set up for something else interesting to happen next, I looked up Julie E. Czernado and discovered that this idea-packed, well-written, epic SF story was her debut novel and that it was published way back in 1997 (and still stands up).

So the bad news is that, even though I'm an avid Science Fiction fan, I somehow missed out on reading Julie E Czernado until now. The good news is that I have another seventeen novels set in the same universe ahead of me. show less

I wasn't quite sure what to make of this book at first. Maybe it was the audio version throwing me off, but for such an ancient alien being shapeshifting through one alien form to another, I got the distinct impression of youthful ignorance.

Then again, I suppose that was intentional.

Fortunately for me, things weren't boring. We had a meet-cute and a serial murderer and lots of planets to travel between. I definitely had a better time when the serial murderer was involved, but getting into show more our youthful hero's biology, it's way of consuming and granting memories, of being a kind of energy being afraid to reveal herself among any kind of sentient life... was rather cool.

I've read a lot of these kinds of SF throughout the years and this one doesn't go far off the track, but the things it does well, it does well. A lot of thought was put into the nature of this alien and it shows. In fact, this is what will draw me back to the series.

Hey, folks, mass conservation is APPLIED here! Wooo! show less