travelling on what is obviously camels repeatedly through the same desert doesnt needpages, Not even, if they do ittimes, SciFi Not so much.
Everybody who reads this book will be absolutely certain, Marak is not mad, From the very start. So, why insist, hes battling insanity
Some persons, who obviously got to this world on some kind ofhip and manipulate the world via nanotech force the entire native population to a monthlong trek through the desert Why
The Ila.
To the main character “it is known where she came from”, Oh, thank you very much, . . why not tell us, the readers, too
Im not following up with “The Forge of Heaven”, Giving up. Right here. First published back in, this science
fiction novel works well as a standalone volume, though a sequel exists, For me, indeed, it worked very well, The situation fascinated me. The main character pleased me, I liked how the book let the reader understand aspects of the events better than the protagonist,
Mild spoilers ahead,
Is this my favorite book by C, J. Cherryh No, but that's a high bar, Would I usually have awarded it a fivestar review Probably not, But I read it while on chemotherapy, and it entertained me in a most satisfactory manner from start to finish, Book appreciation depends not only on the particular reader, but also on the season in which they read the book, Therefore, I shall give thisand a/out ofhammering, rounded up,
About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying, The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction, I am miserly withstar reviewsmeans I liked a book very muchmeans I liked itmeans I didn't like it though often thestar books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved.
Waiting, and waiting, and waiting, . . for the Hammer to Fall,
I love most of Cheryh's work, but not this one which took me forever to read, likely due in large part because the book was such a drag.
The writing style and prose is often quite good as typical with Cheryh, but inn the context of what occurs it is all so drawn out, repetitive, and monotonous that it was hard to enjoy and make it to the few interesting or truly emotional bits.
The novel is barely scifi in that it does deal some with how not one, but two genetic amp nanotechnology engineers might effect an ecosystem, and how some might survive a extinction level event to adapt and construct a new ecosystem.
But the majority of this overlylong novel is a fantasy telling of a questlike mythic journey, It involves not one, but FOUR long jouneys through a relatively barren desert landscape told in minute and boring detail, The main character is a bit of Gary Stu too, in my opinion,
Read it if you are a big C, J. Check fan and completionist, but be prepared for monotony, And if you have never read Cheryh before, do NOT start with this book, Cherryh is a fantastic writer but this is not one of her best works, It started out well enough and drew me immediately into the mystery of the "mad", but once the answer to the riddle was delivered, the story fell apart.
Despite pages and pages of desert danger it was really boring, I found myself skipping pages and pages of the book to get to the part that actually advanced the story line, Sadly these parts were limited to aboutof the book,
I think she also missed opportunity to flesh out characters and relationships, In most cases she simply threw people into the story and told us how great they were instead of taking the time to show us, Considering the amount of filler in the book, it could have been put to better use, I have enjoyed Cherryh in the past, but maybe I was more flexible back then, I am finding her less satisfying lately, I don't understand why these societies of hers must have, for example, slaves, Why can't the people who arrive in these feudalish places, desperate to save the world from destruction, take the shortcut of sending, say, sir questing person on some kind of flying machine with his message, instead of sending him all the way back the way he just came via camelish beast, whereupon he must return yet again, the way he just came, forcing us to endure a third time, a description of the same landscape, blah blah.
. . I dunno.
It started out with an interestingseeming premise, but it got awfully dilated, as I hope I have indicated, For those that don't read sf, they might find the firstpages of most sf novels hard to deal with because most sf authors make assumptions about the reader.
And, subsequently, most sf readers know to "hang in there" because soon enough it will start to make sense, Cherryh probably takes this assumption about the reader and extends it double or triple,
It really took a lot of "hang in there" to get to the point where I felt like I knew what was going on, Having finished the story, there is still a lot of vagueness in certain areas, but overall, I like the story, And while I never could say I liked "the pointofview" which consistedof the world as seen through the primary character, Marak it was put to fairly good use, albeit confusing.
Most of the confusion came into play because Marak's world was so odd and different from our own, But there were many times Cherryh could have done a bit more exposition so that the reader better understood what was going on around Marak, My biggest peeve was "vermin, " Only once was there a mention of what form this vermin might take a beetle but that was just for a moment, and never revisited, Only in the last few pages did she expound on details that the previousof the story had you guessing, So, in that, she didn't trust her readers,
There was also this pounding "Marak, Marak, Marak, . . " throughout the story and, well, we GOT it! It may have been Cherryh's point to make it as tedious to us as it was to Marak, but it got old.
. . real quick.
On the positive side, if we ignore the irritating issues I've discussed, the story was excellent and the characters all very well developed, as you'd expect.
The world was fairly onedimensional populated only by people, vermin and besha camels but that might have been part of the the point of the story, To say more about that would spoil it, So, overall, I did like it and could recommend it, but would temper it by saying, only for hardcore sf fans,
.