Question on the ending of "Cyteen" by Cherryh

[Tamerlane]

@Zsofia

She’s played around a lot with getting aliens right and appropriately alien - the Chanur books were clearly an early effort where the sympathetic races were too human, the unsympathetic ones too evil, and the weird ones too nonsensical.

It’s interesting to compare that first Chanur book ( Pride of Chanur, published in 1981 ) with the last ( Chanur’s Legacy, 1992 ). The aliens are much better developed in the latter, with the “evil” Kif having become the main backing of the Chanur power structure.

@Sleel

One interesting thing about the Foreigner books is how much of the Atevi culture is a slightly warped version of Japanese culture.

This is not to knock Cherryh’s world-building, but to show that even with obvious influences and parallels to real life Japan, she has done some interesting things with those ideas as a jumping-off point. She takes a similar set of conditions, tweaks them a bit, and then plays with the consequences of those changes, while at the same time introducing some elements original to her and narrating it all in a style that is unquestionably unique.

Like mentioned, she does reuse ideas and themes :). Her very early Hanan books from the mid-1970’s used that same Japanese trope. Her Foreigner books are much, much better ( a couple of them are subpar, but mostly it is a solid series ) - but it is a bit amusing to see her to replay that obvious fascination.