Golden Witchbreed

As awful as the cover of this book is, the actual story it tells is pretty good. Less than a generation after humans discovers faster-than-light travel, they have found over 100,000 planets inhabited by intelligent life, and Earth is strained to send even the most inexperienced emissaries to most of them. Lynne Christie is one such emissary, sent to a planet that appears at first glance to be in a Medieval period, complete with a fallen pseudo-Roman civilization in the planet's history. However, soon the Machiavellian politics and alien aspects of life on this planet begin to complicate the envoy's life and then the story really gets going.

Words I learned in this book:
batrachian - amphibian, froglike
crepuscular - of or like show more twilight
eidetic - of visual imagery that is extremely accurate, such as a photographic memory
nictitating - generally blinking, specifically the movement of the "third eyelid" in animals that feature that additional membrane.
tenebrious - dark, gloomy, or difficult to understand
tersion - the act of rubbing something off show less

This is fantastic. Only drawback -- The end wasn't an HEA and the sequel broke my heart. But damn, what writing.

Fascinating book that unveils more and more details about the world and the characters as the story continues. I wish it had a more appealing title. I pretended I was reading a book titled "Orthe: Envoy". And I could do without the apostrophes in the names. Besides that, it was great.

A remarkable first novel with great fluency of style. My one problem was the map inside the back of the book. It very quickly became clear to me that Gentle was going to take us to every place named on that map; and she did, with a terrible inevitability.

A recommended journey to another world. When Earth envoy Christie goes to the planet Orthe to negotiate terms for contact between the two worlds she discovers more than she ever expected. As Christie travels we discover a culture with attitudes — of family life; politics and expectations — just different enough for us to be challenged.

Mary Gentle has created a marvellously complex society well worth visiting.

I liked it enough to finish it, but it was a bit laborious to read. I liked the world and the discoveries, but it was too descriptive for me. Ok, we´re on an alien world, so I´m ok with some descriptions of what is different, but I don´t want to know what every single plant and animal looks like, most certainly not if you´re then going to move to a different part of the world where everything looks different again. I felt a bit the same about the storyline; did she really have to be accused of murder and hunted across country twice?
I did like the relationships, the way the natives were different and the history of the world.

Been a long time since I've read this (must do so again sometime), but I do remember that I enjoyed it muchly as an introduction to Female Writers (Authoress - still a valid word) and how good they can be upon many levels besides just a good imagination.