Cyteen III: Vindication

The culmination of books one and two,' The Betrayl' and 'The Rebirth', the Vindication finally wraps up the saga and all the loose ends and potetials that Cherryth has so wickedly created. A lesser author would lose you with the complexity of the characters and the plot and the world, but Cherryth just manages to capture your mind, suck it into the book, and hold it hostage until the thing is done. WARNING, do not start reading this book before a work day. Or, any of Cherryth's. Start on friday night, so that you will have plenty of time or you might end up in a lot of trouble. By the end of this book, you will want to re-read all the alliance books just to reexperience the saga now that Union has been made real to you. As a public service announcement, the other books loosely in the order written is 'Merchenter's Luck', 'DownBelow Station', 'Forty Thousand in Gehenna', 'RimRunner', and 'Tripoint'.

I enjoyed all three books of the Cyteen trilogy, and Vindication was an excellent conclusion to the series. Besides good character development, the book vividly describes a society and future for the human race that is credible and believable. Human cloning is possible today. In the future of "Cyteen", human cloning techniques have developed to the point that copies of people can be produced and raised so that the copies, in effect are the original people, down to their memories, feeling and reactions to specific stimuli. Ari Emory, the clone, political leader of Union, lives to take revenge on those who assasinated her original. Quite a concept, and carried out brilliantly by Cherryh, one of the finest writers of fiction I have ever read. Dan Kardas

Daniel Spichtinger Cherryh manages to create a highly complex universe. Many details of the plot refer to other novels (e.g. to Downbelow Station). Anybody who has read other works by Cherryh will enjoy these cross references. But the book is also delightful because of its thrilling story, intriguing characters and the dense athmosphere Cherryh creates. Reading the Cyteen novels is one of the most pleasent experiences I ever had (at least with books). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!