Hunter of Worlds

Aiela Lyailleue is abducted by the dreaded iduve, enslaved, and mentally joined with two strangers: Isande, a beautiful woman who doesn't understand his rebellion, and Daniel Fitzhugh, an abused and terrified human. And that's just the beginning of his problems. This is possibly my favorite Cherryh book (which means it's one of my favorite books of all time). It was one of the first ones she wrote, but it already displays her trademark strengths. She creates not one but three distinct alien races here, each with its own language, values, and culture. (If you find the alien languages difficult to follow, there's a glossary in back.) It has everything I've come to expect from a Cherryh novel: the immersion in an alien culture, the Byzantine politics, strong female characters, and most of all the charismatic characters and intense relationships. Probably if she had written this story later in her career, it would be a multi-volume series, like Chanur or Foreigner. But there's something to be said for brevity. Hunter of Worlds is in many ways more accessible than her later works. It's pared to the essentials - concentrated Cherryh. Though the book deals with many of the same themes Cherryh dealt with in later works, I found this one more daring than her usual "getting to know you" books about aliens. When you get right down to it, the iduve are slavers. That's about as unsympathetic as you can get. It's theoretically possible for a murderer to have a worthy motivation, but how can you possibly justify enslaving other intelligent, sentient beings? Yet somehow, she manages to show the iduve as merely alien, not evil. Aiela, a member of the kalliran race, is an appealing character who has interesting relationships with several characters in the book. But the most compelling is his bond with Daniel. They are forcibly mindlinked by the iduve - so mentally entwined that one of them can be disciplined by torturing the other. Daniel, being rather more fractious than any kallia would be, proves quite a trial for poor Aiela. Also interesting is his relationship with Chimele, the ruler of the iduve. While kallia evolved from herd-like prey animals, iduve evolved from predators. Chimele is rather cat-like. Not in looks, but in personality. I've heard that she was inspired by C'Mell, from Cordwainer Smith's "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell." Only instead of being a lowly girly-girl, she's the leader of a natural master race! Hunter of Worlds is out of print as a standalone, but used copies are readily available. Also, it's half of an omnibus called At The Edge Of Space.

Hunter of Worlds (1977) is the second SF novel of the Hanun Rebellion subseries in the Alliance-Union universe. The iduve raised the kallian and the amaut from primitive societies to the metrosi (spacefaring civilization). For the past five hundred years, however, the iduve have wandered far from Kej, their home star, only to return to local space within the past seven years. While the iduve were away, the amaut drifted elsewhere and humans moved into metrosi space. When the amaut returned, they drove the humans off their former worlds and evacuated a mere portion to human space. Some few humans remained, but were reduced to almost mindless slaves under the amaut. In this novel, the Orithain craft Ashanome has come to Kartos Station looking for two persons, a human indentured slave on the amaut ship Konut and a kallian. Noi kame -- shipbred kallians -- take Daniel Fitzhugh off the Konut. Other noi kame search the station files and select Aiela Lyailleue, a young ship commander, as the kallian choice. Both have chiabres implanted within their brains to allow them to exchange thoughts. Aiela is awakened first to adjust to the thoughts of the shipbred Isande, a servant of the Orithain. After two days of practice, Isande is sedated and Daniel is awakened to begin exchanging thoughts with Aiela. Now all three are asuthe, interconnected through Aiela's brain. Chimele, Orithain of the people of Ashanome, is searching for Tejef, the rejected son of her father and an outcast from her nasul. Under the ruling of the Orithanhe, the only authority higher than the Orithaini, Tejef was given a Kej year and three days to run. Then Ashanome was given twice that interval to find him and do whatever they wished with him. Daniel was originally taken by the amaut from human space. The iduve had learned about such excursions and sought a knowledgeable informant. From Daniel's statements, they deduced the presence of Tejef and then extorted from the Orithain of the Chaganokh, a minor iduve nasul, the name of the planet where Tejef left their ship. Standing off Priamos, Ashanome sends Daniel down to infiltrate the human mercenaries working for Tejef. Landing some of their own troops on the planet, they apply pressure on Tejef's operation. Then Daniel comes across a ten year old human refugee and abandons his assumed role to rescue her. In this novel, these kamethi -- bond servants of the nasul -- selected by Chimele greatly disturb the iduve by their strange thinking and emotions. The iduve are predators and have inbred reactions to prey. While they have dealt with shipbred kallians and amaut for millennia, the planetbred Aiela does not habitually avoid provoking such reactions from Chimele. And if Aiela irritates Chimele, Daniel is even worse. However, Chimele restrains her reactions and becomes interested in the differences in behavior of these foreign species. Chimele and her nasithi-katasakke -- siblings -- experience odd glimpses of oth

You can not resist the Starlords.Don't try,comply or die.Isande has learned this rule and must teach it to Aiela,her male counterpart,and to Daniel,a human mercenary for their lives and worlds hang in the balance. A dangerous mission,an uncertain target,a vague reward. You will learn to obey.

After many years of not being able to find my copy of this book (black hole filing system), what I remember most is not the background of vicious competition among clans and characters, but a single sweet turning of one universe into another -- C'mel was a Girly-girl in Corwainer Smith's universe of the Instrumentality of Man, exploited and doomed. C.J. took C'mel and transported her to the universe that should have been. Thanks, C.J.

CJ Cherryh is one of the more prolific Science Fiction/ Fantasy writers of this decade. As her later books appear in print, earlier works get pushed to the back of shelf, are no longer sold and subsequently go out of print. This is a shame when one of the works is Hunter of Worlds. Set in a distant part of the galaxy, it is a story which fascinates due to the interplay of the various races which populate that far off region. As a whole, Hunter of Worlds shows off one of Ms. Cherryh's greatest talents; the ability to create thoroughly believable, fascinating alien cultures, with their morals, viewpoints, religions and especially in the case of this book, their own languages. In so doing, Cherryh avoids creating facile morality tales whereby she uses the alien cultures as Aesop used his fables, to teach us; rather, after permitting us to enter into the alien world view we see ourselves as the aliens see us, with all our strengths and weaknesses. I read Hunter of Worlds early on in my reading of Cherryh's works, and it remains one of the bench marks whereby I judge other works by other authors. As a result of this novel and her "Faded Sun" series, Cherryh is the ONLY Science Fiction author that I will buy off the rack, without a reference. Find a copy of this book, read it and enjoy. Sorry. You can't have mine