Chanur's Homecoming

Great ending to a great trilogy. Yes, this series’ plot is over complex and is nearly packed to the gills with pidgin English but it’s still worth your time regardless. If you’ve ever read a Cherryh novel before all her flaws are still here but so are her talents. I love Pyanfar’s transition from in over her head to a major player. She should go down with all the other great fictional star captains. I admire how throughout this book and series previous events and characters take on new context that shifts perception. There are some great character moments and epic scenes in this trilogy ender. Great ending for Pyanfar and company’s story.

If you like sci fi with lots of aliens and high stakes and are ok with feeling a little show more lost occasionally check out the Chanur series. show less

Shakespeare has Macbeth say that life "is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” "Chanur's Homecoming" indeed has lots of sound and fury but ultimately comes to only a bit more than naught.

I really wanted to enjoy the Chanur saga; I did. Disappointed. The first half of this novel is a punitive read, just directionless, and the action-packed latter half occurs in a jumble of words that just don't consistently make sense. There is far too much mucking about and patois-laced recursive second-guessing, too much to allow the story to just unfold. The constant reliance on sentence fragments (arg!) to imply quick thought is cheap and unwarranted: very pulp-rag. This is a novella stretched out to 350 pages so show more the publisher could kick up the price by $1.75.

I get that space-opera has come a long way since the mid-1980s, but this is tepid even compared to contemporary works like Cherryh's own "Downbelow Station" or Card's 'Ender' novels. show less

I spent a large fraction of this year reading these books, and still have very conflicted feelings about them. I can't tell if the author intends you to feel slightly confused by the complex alien motivations, or if I am just Not Quite Bright Enough / versed in sci-fi story telling tradition, but I did spend large waves of time thinking 'what is going on? Why are they doing this?' Which meant the books were harder work (even if more rewarding) than reading Facebook, so they went rather slowly.

On the other hand, there is lots and lots to like in them. The aliens and their power structures are very alien, Hilfy's growth from young girl to competent spacer is well sketched out, and poor Pyanfer, trying to do the right thing even though show more she knows in the eyes of her world it will look exactly like the wrong thing. And I loved the games with gender, where the women travel the universe and trade, because the men must be sheltered and protected, not as a straight swap of roles, but because they are too angry and impulsive and strong and must be mollycoddled.

The second and third books don't really have an ending. The first book is 'Hani end up accidentally with a human, lots of people run around, there's a battle, everything is better.' And then books two to four tell a very similar story, but with a lot more detail. I would sort of like to reread them now I've made it to the end, because I might understand them better on the second time round, but not enough to spend months reading them all again! show less

Third of the trilogy that began with Chanur's Venture and The Kif Strike Back. The three read as though they were conceived as a single novel, but this one stands successfully alone, though the backstory probably works better because I'd read the others.

Pyanfar Chanur--the main character in these books--grows weary of being other folks' pawn and takes control of her destiny. This impacts many others' destiny as an unintended side effect. The joy, here, is watching all this work itself out. As always, Cherryh's stories are deeply imagined, well-written, and grounded in careful research.

I've commented before on this author's methods. She's unusually reticent about revealing more than her characters know, which can sometimes be show more frustrating. But it makes her stories rich in ways no other author I read can manage. This is a special story, and exceptionally well told.

This review has also been published on a dabbler's journal. show less

‘El regreso de Chanur’ (Chanur’s Homecoming, 1986), de la escritora C.J. Cherryh, continúa exactamente donde se quedó el anterior volumen de la saga, además de concluir la misma. Existe un quinto libro, con Hilfy como protagonista, pero no está traducido al castellano.

La historia sigue con sus conspiraciones políticas, con alianzas político-comerciales entre las diferentes razas del Pacto. Esto es lo que menos me gustó de la anterior novela, y aquí hay más de lo mismo. Esto en sí no sería malo, pero en mi opinión es excesivo si no se adereza de subtramas interesentes, que vayan manteniendo la atención del lector. A mí ha terminado cansándome tanta conspiración. Al menos esta vez sí hay más de un punto de vista. show more En fin, el libro más largo de la saga, y el que menos me ha gustado. Me quedo con los dos primeros, que sí me apasionaron. show less

The four Chanur universe books are my favorite books in the entire universe. Bar none. Cherryh slyly takes on sex, gender, culture, first contact, money, and power, among other issues, all in a rollicking good adventure story.

(Alistair) And so, I have just got on to finishing this series.

By and large, I mostly want to reiterate and correct one thing I said in that previous post; to reiterate my comment on the strangeness in the universe requiring some adaptability of the reader, but especially in this last volume, you're learning a lot of the new strangeness right along with the hani of The Pride of Chanur, which writing mode works very well, I think.

This is a spectacular end to the Compact Space series, as the different factions and even modes of politics of the kif and mahendo'sat manage to embroil Pyanfar Chanur and the Pride even further into the tangled web than they already are, which is saying quite a bit, and the ensuing imbroglio leads them into the show more taking by one kif faction of first Meetpoint, the largest and most important station in the Compact, and then into a desperate chase across space to somehow disentangle the mess and save, potentially, the hani homeworld from destruction at the hands of said warring factions and an inept groundling leadership that doesn't begin to understand the other races or the issues at stake...

This is one impressive series, in terms of backstory, in terms of cultures, in terms of having characters who are all clearly distinct, well-drawn individuals while also having the cultures, in terms of plot complexity, in terms of growth and change, and perhaps most importantly, in terms of being a damn good read. This is what science fiction is supposed to be. Read it.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/2007/12/chanurs-homecoming-c-j-cher... show less