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Thank you to everyone who weighed in on the pen name poll! I'm still personally dithering between Mar Delaney and Elisa Kerr, leaning towards Mar, but I'm not going to rush into it and I appreciate the arguments everyone offered for and against. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. :D

On a different topic, I've been talking about CJ Cherryh on Tumblr as well as here, and talked a few people over there into reading The Pride of Chanur, and thus Tumblr Book Club was born. If you want to discuss a Cherryh book, read this one so you can talk about it with us! I'll make a post here as well as on Tumblr, probably in a week or so. It's only $2.99 on Kindle and also available on Audible.

Roughly paraphrasing how I described it on Tumblr, this book - the first of a series, but can be read as a standalone - is about a ship full of alien lion-women Amazons who semi-kidnap, semi-adopt an escaped human prisoner (the first and only human any of them have ever seen). The society of the hani is based on lions - males are nominally in charge, but are considered (due to gender stereotyping/socializing as much as reality, IIRC) too unstable and violent to interact with outsiders, so women do all the work of trading, war, etc., and hani merchant spaceships are crewed entirely by women. Swaggering, macho, piratical women - if you've read Digger, there is a certain similarity to Ursula Vernon's hyena-warriors.

I've started reading the first couple of chapters, and it's just as much fun as I remember. I think this one is a pretty good introduction to her books, particularly if you like alien worldbuilding, tough women, and hapless woobie-type dudes getting tied up/beat up a lot.

(This does mean that I'm still only halfway through Cloud's Rider, however. So many books, so little time ...)

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Alas, nearly all Cherryh ebooks are unavailable in Australia - Kindle just refuses to sell them to me.

I have, with great reluctance, pirated some of the Foreigner sequence, because after ~20 books I am Invested, but I draw the line at doing that for anything I don't Need Need Need.

And do you have any idea how I might pay back an author without a Patreon for having pirated her ebooks? I would if I could.

Ughhhh! Region-locking is SUCH a pain. :(((

She has a few of her books available for sale on her website - perhaps you could buy them directly from her? Including my personal faves out of all of her books, the Heavy Time/Hellburner duology and the Rusalka trilogy:

http://www.closed-circle.net/ebook-catalog/

Her site also has a link where you can send money directly via Paypal (see "Donations" link on the right).

If you do buy Hellburner (BUY IT BUY IT, we can talk about it XD) the ebook version is missing a scene I'm fond of, so I edited it back into mine; I could send you that version to replace the "official" one.

....woe, Tumblr. - That book sounds very cool though! Also, that is the BEST cover.

That entire series has great covers; see also here and here. The thing that really makes me love them is that those are women, but the covers consistently depict them (as the series does) buff and fierce and not at all shaped like female humans.

I just found a couple of my Chanur books in a box I had put away for about two decades.

I really like this series. :D

I remember liking it but I think if i reread it now it would be like new to me since it's been so long

Lioness space pirates? I look forward to reading this :D

"Gods be feathered, we're honest merchants!"

The pirate Hani show up later in the series.

I love the hani. :D (Still blazing through the book - help, I started reading and I can't stop!)

Who doesn't love the hani? :D

I don't like the first book as much as the rest. She's still writing a stand-alone space opera at this point. Everyone is a simpler version of themselves. But it does move right along, plotwise.

Edited 2018-05-08 11:56 (UTC)

I've now read the first book and am about 3/4 of the way into the second book, and I do really, thoroughly love the first book - it's a very satisfying story and I also think it's a lot more accessible for new readers than a lot of her books are. The second book starts getting into Peak Cherryh (lots of politics, lots of subtextual stuff going on, lots of characters standing around talking for pages and pages, or being confused at each other ... not that the first book doesn't have that, but I think the first one has significantly less of it). That being said, I do agree that she deepens and complexifies the characters and worldbuilding in a thoroughly delightful way. (Also, I just got to the "Tully, noooo" part of Chanur's Venture and D:.)

I started a re-read last night, inspired by this post, but no, I'm only where Py sends Haral shopping. I'm never going to catch up!

And then Martha Wells' second Murderbot book was released today.

Hee! It's not a race - I'm going to make a post on the first book this weekend. (At the rate I'm going, I might be all the way through the series by then, but I don't expect everyone to be). Anyway, I'll do a write-up on Book 1 on the weekend sometime, and people can jump in whenever.

I'm only where Py sends Haral shopping

LOL. I do love how much of her books consist of people in fantastic futuristic/fantasy situations doing ordinary stuff like that.

No, not a race ... I was just worried that I was never going to get to discuss it! XD

Yes, CJC has become my gold standard for alien and future human societies, because you can answer questions about all sorts of mundane situations from her work, even if she never actually shows those activities: her world-building is that solid.

F'r instance, who collects the garbage? On Hani ships, it's the juniormost (and we see that in Legacy). On Anuurn, it's likely that some clans have contracts for that service, and I bet they paint the trucks bright colors and give them cool nicknames and vie with the other cleaning contractors to have the best service and cleanest trucks. On Kif planets, it's lowest-scum work. On family Merchanters, the kids do it, and being the chief of a maintenance crew is something that you can become at an age so low that would shock us nowadays (I think this gets mentioned in Merchanter's Luck). And so on.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure :P

Whee! Come join us. :D

Hey, I seem to be blocked from seeing your last entry 'snerk'. Is this a Dreamwidth glitch or do I need to send a new request for access?

It's not you, it's just that it was a random comment on the book I was reading that I decided to make private since it wasn't really anything other than a stray drive-by comment for fun (like the sort of thing that one might post to Twitter). I could make it public again if you want me to.

It's okay. I saw the author's name and assume it was a comment about the book we're talking about on Tumblr so I've probably seen a similar comment there.

I just unlocked it anyway!

and hapless woobie-type dudes getting tied up/beat up a lot.
Yeah, cause that's not my thing at all... [facepalm] :D

Naturally not, I'm sure. XD

(Cherryh's fondness for helpless woobie dudes does tend to go a little overboard for my particular taste at times, but that's not something I'm THAT into, in general. I tend to prefer her more competent and together characters. Or at least the ones who manage to be sarcastic assholes while being tied up and helpless. That being said, I think she does an excellent job of catering to that particular taste. :D)

Edited 2018-05-22 02:20 (UTC)

if you've read Digger, there is a certain similarity to Ursula Vernon's hyena-warriors

I really liked the Chanur saga but was secretly disappointed that Cherryh didn't include spacefaring hyenas in that universe. On a related note, I'm going to go read Digger now! :D

Oh man, I would be all over space hyenas. :D