Attain Chanurs Legacy (Chanur, #5) Constructed By C.J. Cherryh In Brochure
need to read the whole series, And fellow women readers you've got to love a race of people whose worse curse is may all your children be sons!
Cherryh is great at looking at modern problems and presenting in such a way that we have to think about the rights and wrongs of in this case sexual inequality.
A very interesting conclusion to the Chanur Cycle of tales, begining with what appeared to be a throwaway scene at the end of Chanur's Homecoming.
Hilfy, now a captain in her own right, has to puzzle her way through the intrigues of the Compact races, Stsho, Mahendo'sat, Hani, and Kif, a markedly complex performance contact, and maintain the still fragile peace of her aunt, Pyanfar.
I wouldn't mind additional books in this series, I want to know more about interactions with the humans, and also to get to know more about the Legacy's crew.
Nice finish to the Chanur series, There's an untrustworthy mahe, a trustworthy kif !, stsho lots of them, and a mysterious cargo, There's intrigue, a bit of fighting, and marriages breaking out all over! Who marries whom is for you to find out.
: C. J. Cherryh used her not insignificant writing talents to return us to the universe of hani and kif,
Hilfy Chanur is the main character in Chanur's Legacy, She discovers that captaining a tradeship in the political shadow of her famous Aunt Py is no easy job.
When her ship contracts with the shto to convey an article of historical/cultural significance, her leadership is tested.
The story roars along at break neck speed with complications at every turn, The climax begins with a practical joke and concludes with a grand crescendo of the wedding march, This is a satisfying book on every level,
This one is a good finale, A little better than those leading up to it, I'm glad the audio became available as it made the difficulty of reading the unpronounceable various species names and languages easy.
Dina Pearlman, the narrator did an excellent job throughout, I prefer the later Foreigner series, but this is a good read, This is a reread for me and part of the buddy read of the Chanur series with the sitelinkSpecFic Buddy Reads group.
The series is structured is an initial volume, a middle trilogy and this book, a sequel following Pyanfur's neice Hilfy as the captain of her own ship.
There were five years between the publication of sitelinkChanur's Homecoming and this book and I suspect most of that book was written straight after the previous two and it really shows.
The writing of this is so much smoother and the world so much better thought out,
Hilfy Chanur takes on an unusually lucrative contract with the Stsho governor of Meetpoint Station, Unfortunately she almost immediately regrets the decision as she becomes embroiled in political machinations regarding Stsho internal government with both Mahendo'sat and Kif muddying the waters.
Meanwhile her relatively inexperienced crew is having to contend with a male Hani spacer that Hilfy has somehow acquired in the midst of the action on Meetpoint.
The story is told through alternating viewpoints of Hilfy, Hallan the Hani male and one of Hilfy's crew Tiar Chanur.
Hallan's pointofview is compelling as stepping beyond gender stereotypes in an environment where all his companions believe he doesn't belong.
Hilfy's pointofview is familiar from the other Chanur books, but she's done a lot of growing up and does a lot more during this book.
By the end of it, it's clear that Pyanfur has an heir if she wants one,
This book also gives the Stsho some overdue attention and we learn a lot more about them and their peculiar and fragile psyche as well as their gender system.
If you can slog through the earlier Chanur books and their dense writing, this one is well worth getting to.
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This is the story of Hilfy Chanur, now captain of the ship Chanurs Legacy, and her foray into high stakes trading and politics among the kif, mahendosat, and stsho and tca who inhabit Comoact space with the hani.
Complicating her life further is the presence on her ship of a relatively inexperienced and male hani, Hilfy tries to use the lessons learned as crew under her legendary aunt Pyanfar while establishing her own reputation as captain and clan head.
A wholly satisfying book and conclusion to the Chanur series, Ugh. I had to force myself to finish this, It has the same cross species politics, doublecrossing, hyperspace zipping around but I could never figure out what exactly was going on.
I can usually appreciate the intricate politics that CJ Cherryh create but this was a slog,.stars.
This is about Hilfy Chanur, the niece who became the head of Chanur, Now a trading ship captain in peace time, Hilfy has to content with upholding the Chanur name as well as ensuring her actions do not impact the peace pact her aunt Pyanfar made with the other races, especially when it appears there are factions who'd like nothing better to use her against her aunt.
I had to admit I thought Hilfy and Tully were close friends because of their captivity but I didn't particularly feel their romance in the previous books.
Compared to Pyanfar, Hilfy does come across quite inexperienced in international politics even though she's the cultural expert on the Pride.
I'd say this is almost like a "coming of age" type book, I really enjoyed the humor involved in this final leg of the Chanur Saga, As the Compact grows and oxybreathers deal more with methane folk, it gets a little crazy! And we find out even more about that peculiar race, the Shtsho
This particular tale focuses on Hilfy Chanur and how she captains her own merchant vessel, Chanur's Legacy, in the shadow of her famous and politically powerful aunt.
Long time allies can no longer be trusted and old enemies may actually be the only ones you can trust.
And all the
while, young, unmarried Hallan Meras, has to balance his desire to be a spacer and dealing with ageold prejudices about what it is to be Hani male.
Or in Hilfy's case "Not Tully, "
Great novel that balances so many different issues politically, socially and anthropologically, After the civilizationshaking events of the sitelinkChanur's Homecoming trilogy, this is sort of a return to the smallerscale space opera of the original sitelinkThe Pride of Chanur.
The time is some few years after the events of the Chanur trilogy, Protagonistwise, the torch has been passed to Hilfy Chanur, late of the Pride of Chanur, now captain of her own new ship Chanur's Legacy, just trying to make a living hauling goods from station to station, but never quite able to escape her aunt Pyanfar Chanur's shadow.
Which, after the events of the previous trilogy, Aunt Pyanfar casts a wide, wide shadow indeed,
So when, at Meetpoint Station, a stsho appears with a contract for delivery of an item that, when the contract is paid in full, might put the Legacy well and clear out of debt and into the black, Hilfy takes it, not without some reservation, and only to discover quelle surprise! that the job will not be nearly as easy as it was made out the stsho artifact they carry is accompanied by a stsho individual towards whom great accommodations must be made and the intended stsho recipient of the artifact seems to have lit out on a ship, determined to stay one or more jumps ahead of them.
Oh, and there's also the hani male, Hallan Mearas, that they've taken on board after he was abandoned by his original ship on Meetpoint Station.
. .
More fastpaced, tightlyplotted adventure, this time with more than a soupçon of humor threaded through primarily at the expense of the effete and extremely particular stsho.
Another book that I lost interest in, I'll be back. Maybe. At one point I loved this series but the politics is pretty dull here, Perhaps we've all had as much politics in the real world as we can stand and nothing in the fictional world can compare.
Finished this series with much the same ambivalence I had all through, All of them have exciting moments, all of them have interesting features, not least the depiction of an alien species as the main POV, with humans very minor, littleunderstood characters.
I never felt comfortable with the sometimes lengthy descriptions of the technical maneuvering, which often felt to me like something I ought to have understood but somehow just couldn't make sense of.
I can skim over stuff like that, but when it goes on for pages, it begins to wear thin.
Similarly, I didn't entirely follow a lot of the alien customs/attitudes stuff, which is pretty central to the whole series I eventually just had to accept the events as they came, but it did rather distance me from the characters.
'Chanur's Legacy' is the final book of sitelink'Chanur' series, or maybe it's better to call it postfinal, as the story of Pyanfar and the crew of 'The Pride of Chanur' was concluded in 'sitelinkChanur's Homecoming'.
'Chanur's Legacy' stands out among other books of the series for several reasons first of all, it features an entirely new cast of characters, with only Hilfy and Hallan serving as recurring characters if Hallan's appearance in the epilogue of 'Chanur's Homecoming' qualifies to make him a recurring character.
Secondly, the conflict of the story isn't as largescale as the Compactwide war that Pyanfar had to deal with, but it had just enough of political scheming and complex diplomatic manoeuvring to keep me glued to the pages.
And thirdly, the story has a strong focus on stsho, the species that received so little attention in the original series, even though they are pretty interesting.
Also, it's been awhile since I read the book that focused on the market and economy so much, because the heroes are traders and they need to make a living.
Hilfy Chanur is now the captain of her own ship, 'Chanur's Legacy', and she is far from the naive and innocent kid we met in the very first book of the series.
It's clear that it was impossible for her not to change after everything she had gone through, including the war and her time as the kif's prisoner, but it was still sad to see Hilfy grow so bitter and hardened.
Hilfy struggles so much throughout this story with both her past and her present the burden of responsibility on her shoulders, the tangled mess of politics that her crew got dragged into, her failed marriage, her feelings for Tully and her separation from him, and all of that ultimately manifested into anger toward her aunt Pyanfar, whom Hilfy blames for the situation.
But Hilfy's journey in this book also changes her, and as she tries to navigate her way in the deadly interspecies politics that she got involved in, Hilfy has to make hard decisions for the sake of her crew and after being in Pyanfar's shoes herself, Hilfy was finally able to understand her aunt and the reasons of her actions and accept Tully's decision to go with The Pride and not her.
In the previous books I saw Hilfy change from a naïve, idealistic youth into a harsher and cynical person, and now I saw her actually grow wise and judicious ironically, very much like Pyanfar.
Hilfy wasn't always an easy character to follow, but I couldn't be more proud of the person she became at the end of the book.
Hallan Meras shares the role of protagonist in 'Chanur's Legacy', and in some way Hallan plays the same role that Hilfy did during the first books of the series, that of the newcomer to the ship and juniormost crewmember that has a lot to learn.
By the time the story takes place, hani males are allowed into space, but they are still very uncommon there, and that makes Hallan, who had dreamed of space as long as he can remember, quite a rarity.
But even though Hallan is met with hostility and prejudice on most stations and ships, he works hard to achieve his goals he is overly enthusiastic, eager to see the world and very pleasant to read about.
I had several theories regarding the way Hallan's story was going to develop for example, I seriously suspected that Hallan was actually Chur's illegitimate son that she had abandoned as a babe, but that theory quickly fell apart when Hallan was sharing memories of his family.
Hallan's journey wasn't what I expected it to be, but it was all the more enjoyable for it,
Hallans interactions with the crew of Chanurs Legacy and the different relationships he forms with them was definitely a highlight of the book for me.
Hilfy, Tiar, Tarras, Chihin and Fala, all of them have unique personalities and voices, and the book really made every one of them stand out.
Its pretty interesting to see their attitude to Hallan change, from the moment Hilfy is forced to grudgingly take him onboard to the moment he truly becomes not only part of the crew, but a part of their little tightknit family as well.
Tiar is a conservative and doesn't initially welcome Hallan, but she is still considerate enough to remember about Hallans lost baggage and get him some personal stuff when he arrives on the ship.
This little detail characterizes Tiar so well, because at her heart she is caring and motherly, and eventually, it doesnt take long for Tiar to take Hallan under her wing.
Tarras and her comradery with Hallan is easily one of my favourites because Tarras accepted Hallan right away and always stood by his side.
Tarras is direct, blunt and straightforward, and while Hallans relationship with other crewmembers is more complicated, Tarras had always been his bro, clear and simple.
Hallan's relationship with Fala and Chihin is much more complex, and that's the part of the story that I enjoyed more than the main plotline, though it's not because the plot is weak, it's just that seeing Hallan coming to terms with his feelings and trying to manoeuvre his way out of the love triangle is way too entertaining.
Besides, how many books are there featuring a love triangle between one guy and two girls Fala is the youngest member of the crew of 'Chanur's Legacy', and she quickly comes to adore Hallan, being quite straightforward in displaying her affection and while Hallan is attracted to her as well, her desperate attempts to flirt with him only add to Hallan's embarrassment and awkwardness, as he doesn't want to get in any trouble.
Chihin, on the other hand, is one of the older crew members and even more conservative than Tiar, so she doesn't accept Hallan at once.
It seems that she and Hallan cannot be more different, and they actually have to work to understand each other's views and respect each other, which certainly creates an interesting dynamic until it grows into something more.
The relationship between Hallan and Fala is sweet and lighthearted, but the sparks that fly between him and Chihin are so strong that one can easily get electrified.
This creates a lot of tension between the characters, but that makes it even more heartwarming to see Fala make peace with Hallan and Chihin after their quarrel.
Not to mention that Hallan's plotline in the end is resolved in an unusual, hilarious and pretty epic way remember what I said about Hallan becoming part of the family That wasn't a figure of speech.
Shut up, You are married.
And that was legitimately the best marriage proposal ever,
However, while 'Chanur's Legacy' is undoubtedly more lighthearted than the previous books of 'Chanur' series, it doesn't lose the intricacy of the plot that makes these stories so engaging, and the political intrigues in it are just as complex as before.
In fact, they make the story more of a mystery, as Hilfy gets involved into political games between stsho, mahendosat and kif, and all the while she doesnt know exactly what is going on, what significance the mysterious object she has to transport plays in all of this and, most importantly, whom she can really trust.
And thats not the only challenge Hilfy has to face while the crew of Sun Ascendant that formerly employed Hallan was happy enough to get rid of him, they didnt miss a chance to undermine Chanurs positions, as Sahern clan is a longstanding rival of Chanur.
So not only Sahern crew abandoned Hallan when he needed their help the most and then refused to let him return, but once Hilfy gave him a berth on Chanurs Legacy, they used the precedent to accuse Chanur of kidnapping and rape.
The nerve of some people, I should say!
The stsho are in the center of this story's plot, and I really appreciated seeing more of these species, since they are not as wellexplored as hani or kif or mahe, and their species are more than interesting.
I mean, they have three genders and can change gender under stress, thus practically becoming another person in a very literal way, how can that be not interesting In fact, it's the intricate dance of stsho politics that kicks the plot of 'Chanur's Legacy' in motion.
Do not underestimate stsho: they may be physically weak, emotionally feeble, naturally pacifist and mentally fragile to the point they can actually die of stress, but they also hold very real power, as they are probably the richest species in the Compact, and when the stsho ambassador threatens to shut down all the trade with a certain station, all the officials start hopping at gtst word at once though I suspect that things wouldve been different in a more dire situation.
In fact, it really shows that the Compact has become a much more stable place when Hilfy's crew got shot at one of the stations and police arrived, and the authorities apologized and at least promised to look into the incident.
It's such a contrast with the previous books, where the crew was attacked or shot at during their stays on stations several times a book, and no one blinked on eye.
'Chanur's Legacy' really flips the usual species roles around, as this time it's mahendosat in the face of mahe agent Haisi that oppose Hilfy in her quest while kif act.
. . well, not as heroes, but as antiheroes to certain degree, and that's an interesting development compared to the first Chanur books, especially since it provides a solid ground for Hilfy's character development.
Normally, Im not prone to diagnosing characters, but its clear that Hilfy suffers from PTSD from the time she was captured and tortured by kif, and Haisi just keeps pressing all the right buttons to trigger it.
So it makes me especially proud when Hilfy still keeps her head about and chooses the right side instead of letting her emotions rule her.
She kicked PTSD's butt all right! Vikktakkht, the kif on the other side of the opposition between mahe and kif, subverts all the stereotypes about kif, as he rather noble and tolerant for a species that greet each other with a phrase May you eat hearts and eyes of your enemies.
However, it all becomes clear when its revealed that he is actually Skkukuk, the kif that served together with Hilfy on The Pride of Chanur: he is more prone to giving people second chances, because he had been given one himself.
And it becomes even more amusing once you realize that Vikktakkht intentionally hid his identity by using the fact that most hani cannot tell one kif from another.
All in all, Chanurs Legacy is a worthy addition to the series, and it was nice to revisit the world of Compact and see old and new characters of Chanur saga again.
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