The Background

CJ Cherryh is my favorite author. She’s a prolific sci-fi writer of the late-70s 80s 90s, maybe slowing down to the present but she still got a book published in 2020. Her work might be described as hard sci-fi space opera. My sister got me the Chanur Saga as a gift for Christmas and I’ve finally worked my way through it. The Chanur Saga is 1 volume collection of 3 books about the Chanur, let me tell you about the Chanur…

The Book

Chanur is a house of the alien species the Hani and the story is told from their perspective. In particular, this is a mostly single point of view story following Pyanfar, the captain of Pride of Chanur a space going merchant vessel that trades at space stations across the known space with a collection of other alien species from other worlds.

CJ Cherryh is the queen of alien species. Imagining culturally, biologically, and mentally distinct alien species is one of her many strengths, and something I think she does better than any other sci-fi writer that has ever been.

This alien species though, the Hani, seems toned down, cartoonish, humanistic, just marginally off of humans mentally and marginally off of humans culturally. They are lovable. They are humans if humans were evolved from cats rather than primates. They are cats in space, and it’s amazing.

It makes me think about earth circa 1981 when the first book was written and two dominant works of the time, Star Wars and the Muppets, because this story and the Hani in particular feels like a combination of the two.

But this is CJ Cherryh, and she cannot have just one alien species in a book. This book is about the intersection of 7 different space-faring alien species that go from relatable, to weird, to almost completely unfathomable, even by other creatures of this universe. They’ve developed a Compact, an agreement providing balance by which they can all profit through trade.

The main antagonist species is the Kif, which remind me of the Skeksis of Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal. And on the surface, the Kif have the look and feel of an antagonist. Dark hooded robes. Tall and stooped. Aggressive. Cannibalistic. Beaks. Jaws. Their food has to be alive when they eat it. A language full of hard vowel sounds. They are very clearly on the other side here. They are bad.

But this is a CJ Cherryh book and she cannot imagine creatures whose intrinsic motives are not hardwired by evolution. She cannot imagine a species that does not squirm to the rhythm of its own internal politics. She cannot imagine interactions between species that do not have actors whose own goals and agendas might lead them to odd friendships.

And there lies the complexity that CJ Cherryh embraces. The politics between alien species driven by the politics between factions of each species driven by the desire of individual actors for personal gain.

This volume of books can be read to as a treatise on all political actions having complex motives. Or it can be read as Cats in Space with Guns. Either way it’s a great, fun, adventurous space opera that for me was engaging cover to cover.