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 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. ( )

Cuando esas entidades enigmáticas que se dan a sí mismas el nombre de humanos enviarón el primer navío de exploración al universo del Pacto, alteraron las tradicionales alianzas político-comerciales entre las siete especies conocidas. Y al dar refugio al único humano superviviente, la capitana hani Pyanfar Chanur y su tripulación de la "Orgullo" se vieron instaladas en el centro de un fantástico torbellino de proporciones galácticas y convertidas involuntariamente en la llave maestra de un juego de poderes que apenas comprendían.

Chanur's Homecoming by CJ Cherryh. This is the third in a trilogy telling a story that follows on from a previous stand alone book that set the seeds for this story (The Pride of Chanur). The leads all come together as Pynafur starts to realise the inter species politics that had restricted her species to only one planet. When that planet is threatened she comes up with a plan to try and prevent disaster. This is a great finish to the story. I really think this is one of the best science fiction universes where different species interact in all too believable ways. ( )

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 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! ( )

slow, so slow. ( )