Brothers of Earth

That was the first novel that Cherryh sold but the second to be published. So when I decided to start reading all her books in order, I wondered for a bit where to start. And as the two are not relate, it ended up with starting from the one I could find first.

Meet Kurt Morgan. He is not the luckiest man in the universe - he was on a ship fighting another ship of the Hanans (both sides are human - just good old human on human war amongst the stars being led for 2 000 years - and noone remembers why anymore) when his ship manages to destroy the enemy one - but not before jumping after it to a star he had never seen and allowing one last charge of their weapon - that is coming to destroy Kurt's ship. Ship explodes, Kurt evacuates and he show more has not idea where he is, how to get home or if there is where to crash. Well - maybe he is lucky after all - a planet that he can breath on is just in range and he lands - with no chance to ever get back home. And he is not alone.

The planet is the home of the Nemet - a non-human (but humanoid) race living in a society that looks like the Middle Ages with honor and family being at the top of the list. There is also another human - a woman... and Hanan. To say that things do not go very well will be an understatement.

It is an old style adventure on a new planet - there are pirates (of a type) and a girl, a big adventure and a revolution, death and almost death, loss and hope. And if you come to this novel expecting that, it is a pretty good one - it is not perfect and it has the issues of the SF novels of the time - it is a boys tale in a world that looks like a boys' dream (it is kinda amusing that it was written by a woman). It has female characters - although besides Djan (the second human), all other women are subordinate and to some extent just there - the adventures happen only to the men, the decision are taken by the men (although there is always a matriarch in the family that seems to be as important as the patriarch for some things).

That novel started what will become one of the big and well known series in the world of SF - the Alliance-Union universe. Kurt and his planet are part of the Alliance - even though the tale is set way ahead in the future.

It is a fascinating world and the Nemet are an interesting race. If I was rating just the world building, it would have been 5 stars. But the story does not hold that well for an adult book - I am happy I read it but unless if you want to read the whole set of the Alliance novels, it can be skipped. show less

Cherryh’s first novel (published a few months after Gates of Ivrel, but actually submitted and accepted first) from 1976. It’s based on a premise Cherryh has used many times throughout her career - a human man crashlands on an alien, but humanoid, world and tries to integrate, inadvertently kicking off a war between various nations/factions (cf Compact Space, Cuckoo’s Egg, Faded Sun, Foreigner, etc). The story takes place over a thousand years after Cherryh’s Alliance/Union history, although the Alliance still exists. But it’s at war with another human polity, the Hanan. Kurt Morgan, sole survivor of an Alliance warship, crashes and is discovered by a party of locals, the nemet. They take him aboard their sailing ship to the show more city of Nephane, where he meets the methi, the ruler of the city, who is Hanan, and the sole survivor of an earlier Hanan mission. She allows him to enter the household of Kta, the captain of the ship. Kta’s family is the Elas, and they’re descended from the Indras, inhabitants of a powerful theocratic state across the sea. Nephane is split between Indras-descended and the original locals, the Sufaki, with the former forming a wealthy and powerful elite. The Sufaki rebel, Morgan and Kta are caught up in it, and flee because the methi supports the Sufaki… The world is at a roughly late Bronze Age level - Cherryh used to teach ancient history - so it’s all swords and sandals and triremes, with the theocratic Indras versus the more liberal Indras-descended of Nephane versus the pantheistic Sufaki. This is stuff Cherryh has done many times since, and better. For a first novel, in the 1970s, it’s sort of impressive, and it’s interesting seeing how much of Cherryh’s style was pretty much there from the beginning. But the story does drag in places, and while there are plenty of strong female characters, the main protagonists are male - and there's an instance of fridging. One for Cherryh fans. show less

Okay - I really wanted to like this one. But it is just not very good. The plot is all over the place, the characters mostly one sided. There isn't much reason for any of the actions of the humans, although the alien species, the Hanan, has a culture that is well written. I couldn't finish it.

This is one of the first books written by this author - and all of Cherryh's trademarked elements are there - Almost human aliens (but not quite), tradition vs new ideas, all the elements found in her later books are here, but jumbled.

I think that if you are a CS. Cherryh fan, you will probably want this book.

An Alliance man is stranded on an earth-like world after a battle with Union. On this world, one city is ruled by a Union human female. This city is a former colony of a city across the sea. This former colony city has two groups of the native species, where the city across the sea has one. There are humans that are the very degenerate descendents of a once dominating class. I think they were stranded and awaited rescue by (I believe) Union forces, but the native species conquered them. The Alliance man falls in love with a women of the lower class native. And this sets up the action that results in the threatened destruction of the former colony. This romance between human and native seem to come out of the blue and not well explained. show more The Union female ruler seems more formidable in the beginning of the book than she does at the end. An entertaining read. I wonder how much of the outline of the Alliance/Union universe was actually in the author's mind with this initial publication. show less

NOPE. I couldn't get into the dry, distanced writing style, but I pushed through hoping things would start making more sense. At least, until the main character fell into insta-love with a women and then proceeded to show it by breaking all her boundaries (there was one sentence that literally says he did something against her wishes). I skipped ahead to see if there was anything to look forward to, and happened to flip to her suicide from shame at being kidnapped. NOPE.

it is definitely recognizable as C.J. Cherryh's work, and um it is also recognizable as an early work. her plot concepts and worldbuilding skills show right away, but her complex and brilliant character development is not there yet. at least not in the way that I have come to expect from C.J. Cherryh. and her characterization is what I love best about her work, so, while Brothers of Earth was still a good read, I'd give it a 3.

it was jerky and a bit hard to follow and goodness the human character seemed to be outraged or offended at everything, and I didn't know why. all this is, of course, not a problem in her later works. she was good to start with but she's gotten a lot better ;)

This is a fairly typical early C.J. Cherryh work. Dealing with cross cultural (human/alien) understanding, being an "outsider", and being a human in an alien culture where humans are the minority. Themeatically very similar to the Foreigner series. A decent read for Cherryh fans, though not a great introduction to her work.