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Loading... Gate of Ivrelby C. J. Cherryh, C. J. Cherryh (Author)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I read Gate of Ivrel long ago and was fascinated by the story. Would the story of Morgaine and the ilin (think Japanese "ronin") Vanye resonate still, even after the 1981 original publication? The answer is a resounding "Yes!" The qhal created a mess, and it is up to Morgaine to fix the problem by shutting down the source: gates that link various times and places. The illegitimate Vanye, tossed out on his ear for accidentally killing one legitimate son and maiming the other, ends up giving his oath to Morgaine. Will they stay together? (Well, this is a trilogy!) Will they succeed in Morgaine's quest? Stick around and find out. This classic sword-and-sorcery book with a hint of SF background stands the test of time. Read it if you haven't already! I re-read this recently and it's better than I remember it being. It's pretty character-focused, both on the character's introspections and their interactions with each other, but it also hums along at a very quick pace plot-wise because it doesn't waste a lot of time on description or narration of stuff that isn't relevant. Which is basically exactly how I like my light entertainment reading constructed. And Vanye is a fun perspective because he actually has a realistic level of fear of death instead of the "gee this is an interesting adventure" blitheness you normally get in genre protagonists. Whelan's cover art is fucking ridiculous and bad. no reviews | add a review
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Scattered about the galaxy were the time-space Gates of a vanished but not forgotten alien race. In their time, long before the rise of the native civilizations, they had terrorized a hundred worlds--not from villainy but from folly, from tampering with the strands that held a universe together. Now the task was to uproot these Gates, destroy their potency for mischief, take horror out of the hands of the few who hungered for power by misuse of the Gates. This is the story of one such Gate and one such world. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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He is cast out as an outlaw and doomed to wander till he dies, either of starvation, exposure, being murdered in revenge or being killed by one of the strange creatures which Thiye, a clan leader with a reputation for using the evil magics of the past, has brought through the major gate, which he controls. Vanye's only hope to win back his honour and cancel his outlaw status is to find a lord who will accept his oath of service for either a year or to carry out a task, though surviving such service is not easy.
The story switches to his plight a couple of years later when, half-starved and freezing in the winter, he tries to shoot a deer with his bow, but succeeds in driving it through the pillars of what his people regard superstitiously as the Witchfires - a minor gate linked to the main gate on their planet - on a hill which is normally shunned but where he has accidentally wandered too close. The deer's entry displaces Morgaine, trapped within the gate for a century. She and her surviving comrades came to the planet to destroy its gates, and raised an army among the various clans, but disaster struck and Morgaine was blamed. Pursued, she had been forced to ride into the gate and been trapped there in stasis ever since. Her distinctive appearance - she is nicknamed Frosthair - indicates her identity, but Vanye, forced to shelter with her and share the meat from a deer she kills with one of her fearsome weapons, tries to tell himself it was only exhaustion which led him to think she rode out from between the stones. He then finds himself forced into swearing an oath of allegiance to her for a year's service or to complete her mission if she is unable to, and his problems really begin. The only mitigation is that, as a sworn follower of his lord - and Morgaine has lord status from her previous dealings with the indigenous people - he is in theory protected by her, but he soon meets members of various clans, including his surviving half-brother, who have different ideas.
Things become complicated when these various clans make demands upon Morgaine, trying to use her and her technology for their own ends, and it transpires that she is not the only individual with a knowledge of gates. For there are a number of villains in the story, greater and lesser.
When shelving this book, I elected to put it under both science fiction and fantasy, because the background is SF - interplanetary timetravel, ray weapons, a 'sword' which taps the power of the gates and has the power to pull living things through - but the setting is classic fantasy, with warriors and a warrior culture which is slightly reminiscent of the Japanese Samurai. It falls into the genre category of 'science fantasy' for these reasons.
The story is told from the fairly close third person viewpoint of Vanye so we never enter Morgaine's viewpoint and can only see her through his eyes. She is honest about the fact that she will abandon him at a moment's notice if it serves her mission, and she is totally focused upon the need to destroy or close the main gate at Ivrel, which is controlled by Thiye. Vanye, meanwhile, is torn by the deeds which his oath condemns him to perform, and a lot of the book concerns his angst at the rift with his surviving half-brother and his conflicting loyalties. The one weakness is really the geography - it becomes difficult to envisage how the various clan territories impinge and why travelling in a particular direction would bring him back within the grasp of his brother, for example. The edition I was reading did not have a map, and that would have helped. But I enjoyed the book and am rating it 4 stars. ( )