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Merovingen Nights #0
Angel with the Sword
In a fantastic city of canals, seventeen-year-old gondolier Altair Jones finds herself involved in aristocratic plots and mortal danger when she rescues a man thrown into the canal to drown
304 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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791 people want to read
About the author
C.J. Cherryh
291 books3,492 followersCurrently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J. Cherryh has won four Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. She is the author of more than forty novels. Her hobbies include travel, photography, reef culture, Mariners baseball, and, a late passion, figure skating: she intends to compete in the adult USFSA track. She began with the modest ambition to learn to skate backwards and now is working on jumps. She sketches, occasionally, cooks fairly well, and hates house work; she loves the outdoors, animals wild and tame, is a hobbyist geologist, adores dinosaurs, and has academic specialties in Roman constitutional law and bronze age Greek ethnography. She has written science fiction since she was ten, spent ten years of her life teaching Latin and Ancient History on the high school level, before retiring to full time writing, and now does not have enough hours in the day to pursue all her interests. Her studies include planetary geology, weather systems, and natural and man-made catastrophes, civilizations, and cosmology…in fact, there's very little that doesn't interest her. A loom is gathering dust and needs rethreading, a wooden ship model awaits construction, and the cats demand their own time much more urgently. She works constantly, researches mostly on the internet, and has books stacked up and waiting to be written.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
August 17, 2013
3.5 – 4 stars
So, I finally popped my Cherryh. It took me awhile, but believe me, it’s not from a lack of trying! C. J. Cherryh is one of those writers who looms pretty large in SF/Fantasy genre circles without making too much noise about it. I’ve been aware of her presence for years, and I know that she is viewed as both an excellent writer and, at times, a difficult one. She has, I believe, a strong and devoted following and in general just seems like the kind of writer you really ought to have read if you travel in the genre circles I do. And I’ve tried, believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve bounced off at least one of her fantasy books, and another of her more famous SF ones. I’ve still kept my eye on her though and this time things seem to have clicked for us. Don’t know if it was the timing, the specific novel I chose, or something else, but I thoroughly enjoyed _Angel with the Sword_ and am looking forward to diving into more of Cherryh’s extensive ouvre with higher hopes that at least some will be to my liking.
Cherryh has been a very prolific author. As mentioned above she has penned both SF and fantasy tomes (as well as the blended 카지노싸이트 Fantasy that partakes of both) and much of her significant SF output has been in multiple series that span time, space, and in some ways even genre and yet all of which are part of a much larger future history of mankind amongst the stars (The Alliance-Union universe of which this volume is a peripheral part). I love this kind of thing, or at least I love the idea of it. Sprawling future histories with room to really explore differing political, ideological, and personal aspects of the human condition, along with all of that cool what-if technology and even crossing into other genres (like science fantasy) gives me a happy feeling. I say that I like the idea of it, though, because up to this point I have to admit that I have yet to find a future history series that has really clicked for me.
While I would classify this book as science fiction it looks much more like a fantasy at first blush. The world of Merovin in which we find ourselves appears to be something analagous to the late Renaissance, but it is made clear from the start that this is a fallen colony world that no longer has access to the high technology of the space-farers who were the colonist's ancestors. Also, these colonial descendants have not forgotten from whence they came (though at this point most of the details are lost) so it isn't a case of a primitive world that views technology as magic, though it is one where it is strictly limited due to lack of knowledge, limited resources, and most importantly a set of cultural restrictions that have become part and parcel of what it means to be a Merovingen and which harken back to the catastrophes that brought about their separation from the rest of the Human ecumene.
In this book Cherryh has in some ways taken what we would consider the traditional approach to her cast of characters and turned it on its head. The character of Mondragon (the aristocratic, sword-wielding figure of authority embroiled in high politics and nation-shaking events), who in almost any other sci-fi/fantasy work would have been the hero, is instead the secondary character while we follow the one who would normally be the side-kick: Altair Jones, a lowly skip pilot barely eking out a living moving illegal freight across the canals and rivers of a Venice-like city on this lost colony world of Merovin. To add to the inversion Mondragon is the one who needs to be saved by her, which certainly makes for an intriguing story as we follow Altair in her attempts to navigate both the lowly ‘canal-side’ world on the periphery of the criminal underworld with which she is familiar as well as the ‘hightown’ world of aristocrats and power brokers in which she is a true fish out of water.
The detail with which Cherryh builds the world of Merovin is impressive. She makes use of both an introduction to set the scene as well as an appendix at the back of the book to give greater detail to the interested reader on the culture that she builds in the novel proper. Her world-building within the context of the story proper, however, is done without resort to the dreaded infodump and she trusts the reader to gather the pieces left through passing comments and references made by characters and the tight third person narration and put them together themselves such that details of the broader picture can be distilled from the context in which they occur. I was probably most impressed with the vivid picture she painted of the life of Altair herself. It is a life that has been mostly hand-to-mouth where many things we would likely consider to be necessities are for Altair the greatest of luxuries to be obtained only in the rarest of circumstances (such as sugar for one’s tea). We are never bashed over the head with this, but simply come to appreciate the kind of life that a canaler on Merovin can come to expect. This of course comes into even greater focus as Altair is drawn into the hightown world that Mondragon calls home.
What ensues is a cat-and-mouse game of conspiracies and mysteries set against the backdrop of a hard-scrabble world that has lost everything but hope, and even that is of a rather callous sort. The real star is Altair Jones, an extremely well-drawn heroine who thinks and acts in ways that make sense and allow her to seem like a real person, not a literary archetype or a plot element. The world we get to live in for a short time is intriguing and colourful and certainly held my interest. The plot was intricate without being convoluted and was certainly strong enough to bear the weight that the world and characters demanded. The long and the short of it is that this book leaves me with a desire to read much more of Cherryh’s work and a sense of anticipation at what I might find there. That, my friends, is definitely a good thing.
So, I finally popped my Cherryh. It took me awhile, but believe me, it’s not from a lack of trying! C. J. Cherryh is one of those writers who looms pretty large in SF/Fantasy genre circles without making too much noise about it. I’ve been aware of her presence for years, and I know that she is viewed as both an excellent writer and, at times, a difficult one. She has, I believe, a strong and devoted following and in general just seems like the kind of writer you really ought to have read if you travel in the genre circles I do. And I’ve tried, believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve bounced off at least one of her fantasy books, and another of her more famous SF ones. I’ve still kept my eye on her though and this time things seem to have clicked for us. Don’t know if it was the timing, the specific novel I chose, or something else, but I thoroughly enjoyed _Angel with the Sword_ and am looking forward to diving into more of Cherryh’s extensive ouvre with higher hopes that at least some will be to my liking.
Cherryh has been a very prolific author. As mentioned above she has penned both SF and fantasy tomes (as well as the blended 카지노싸이트 Fantasy that partakes of both) and much of her significant SF output has been in multiple series that span time, space, and in some ways even genre and yet all of which are part of a much larger future history of mankind amongst the stars (The Alliance-Union universe of which this volume is a peripheral part). I love this kind of thing, or at least I love the idea of it. Sprawling future histories with room to really explore differing political, ideological, and personal aspects of the human condition, along with all of that cool what-if technology and even crossing into other genres (like science fantasy) gives me a happy feeling. I say that I like the idea of it, though, because up to this point I have to admit that I have yet to find a future history series that has really clicked for me.
While I would classify this book as science fiction it looks much more like a fantasy at first blush. The world of Merovin in which we find ourselves appears to be something analagous to the late Renaissance, but it is made clear from the start that this is a fallen colony world that no longer has access to the high technology of the space-farers who were the colonist's ancestors. Also, these colonial descendants have not forgotten from whence they came (though at this point most of the details are lost) so it isn't a case of a primitive world that views technology as magic, though it is one where it is strictly limited due to lack of knowledge, limited resources, and most importantly a set of cultural restrictions that have become part and parcel of what it means to be a Merovingen and which harken back to the catastrophes that brought about their separation from the rest of the Human ecumene.
In this book Cherryh has in some ways taken what we would consider the traditional approach to her cast of characters and turned it on its head. The character of Mondragon (the aristocratic, sword-wielding figure of authority embroiled in high politics and nation-shaking events), who in almost any other sci-fi/fantasy work would have been the hero, is instead the secondary character while we follow the one who would normally be the side-kick: Altair Jones, a lowly skip pilot barely eking out a living moving illegal freight across the canals and rivers of a Venice-like city on this lost colony world of Merovin. To add to the inversion Mondragon is the one who needs to be saved by her, which certainly makes for an intriguing story as we follow Altair in her attempts to navigate both the lowly ‘canal-side’ world on the periphery of the criminal underworld with which she is familiar as well as the ‘hightown’ world of aristocrats and power brokers in which she is a true fish out of water.
The detail with which Cherryh builds the world of Merovin is impressive. She makes use of both an introduction to set the scene as well as an appendix at the back of the book to give greater detail to the interested reader on the culture that she builds in the novel proper. Her world-building within the context of the story proper, however, is done without resort to the dreaded infodump and she trusts the reader to gather the pieces left through passing comments and references made by characters and the tight third person narration and put them together themselves such that details of the broader picture can be distilled from the context in which they occur. I was probably most impressed with the vivid picture she painted of the life of Altair herself. It is a life that has been mostly hand-to-mouth where many things we would likely consider to be necessities are for Altair the greatest of luxuries to be obtained only in the rarest of circumstances (such as sugar for one’s tea). We are never bashed over the head with this, but simply come to appreciate the kind of life that a canaler on Merovin can come to expect. This of course comes into even greater focus as Altair is drawn into the hightown world that Mondragon calls home.
What ensues is a cat-and-mouse game of conspiracies and mysteries set against the backdrop of a hard-scrabble world that has lost everything but hope, and even that is of a rather callous sort. The real star is Altair Jones, an extremely well-drawn heroine who thinks and acts in ways that make sense and allow her to seem like a real person, not a literary archetype or a plot element. The world we get to live in for a short time is intriguing and colourful and certainly held my interest. The plot was intricate without being convoluted and was certainly strong enough to bear the weight that the world and characters demanded. The long and the short of it is that this book leaves me with a desire to read much more of Cherryh’s work and a sense of anticipation at what I might find there. That, my friends, is definitely a good thing.
May 4, 2012
The city is water-logged Merovingen, on the world of Merovin, a human-settled planet now isolated and planet-bound after an alien war.
The person is Altair Jones, daughter of Retribution Jones, walking a fine line between isolation and degradation. Altair Jones, who survives because she's a light sleeper, who runs deliveries on her small skip and has been alone since her mother's death when she was twelve. Getting by, trusting little, barely keeping herself whole.
Altair Jones, who used to rescue kittens out of the stinking water. All the kittens would die, but she would still fish them out. One time she fished out someone's baby. He died too.
This time Altair Jones fishes out a man. And he doesn't die.
Mondragon, fine and full of secrets, hunted by faction after faction in a political tangle seemingly impossible to unravel.
The story is full of boat-hooks and fire-bombs, desperate races by water, and the slow build of trust between two people of completely different backgrounds, with so much against them that it's clear from the start just how impossible they are.
The book is the best damn thing I've read all year.
The person is Altair Jones, daughter of Retribution Jones, walking a fine line between isolation and degradation. Altair Jones, who survives because she's a light sleeper, who runs deliveries on her small skip and has been alone since her mother's death when she was twelve. Getting by, trusting little, barely keeping herself whole.
Altair Jones, who used to rescue kittens out of the stinking water. All the kittens would die, but she would still fish them out. One time she fished out someone's baby. He died too.
This time Altair Jones fishes out a man. And he doesn't die.
Mondragon, fine and full of secrets, hunted by faction after faction in a political tangle seemingly impossible to unravel.
The story is full of boat-hooks and fire-bombs, desperate races by water, and the slow build of trust between two people of completely different backgrounds, with so much against them that it's clear from the start just how impossible they are.
The book is the best damn thing I've read all year.
June 16, 2013
I just finished this and I have to say I really enjoyed it. Like enough to close the book and scour the internet for the other 7 books in the series, and dole out real cash. It's a crime that great stuff written before the advent of the internet is so hard to find, and impossible to find in digital format.
Altair Jones is the rare female protagonist that really catches my interest. She isn't written as beautiful, or extraordinarily powerful. She's just a tough, canny girl doing the best she can with what she has. I found myself rooting for her almost instantly. She human, losing her heart in a way she knows isn't smart to a man she knows is too pretty to be good for her. She gets tired, and pushes on. She gets smacked around and then gets back up.
Merovin is a world realistic enough to be plausible, unusual enough to be interesting, and hopeful enough to keep you turning the page. The story, which to me was just a tool to provide exposition for Jones and her personality, was tight, tricky, and assembled in a logical way. Perhaps the only real weakness in this book was how thinly Mondragon was defined. A little too mysterious.
This wasn't, as they say, Shakespeare, but it was a fun weekend read, and it absolutely whet the appetite for more of the same. I recommend it to anyone who wants a gritty adventure story with good guys who deserve your support.
Altair Jones is the rare female protagonist that really catches my interest. She isn't written as beautiful, or extraordinarily powerful. She's just a tough, canny girl doing the best she can with what she has. I found myself rooting for her almost instantly. She human, losing her heart in a way she knows isn't smart to a man she knows is too pretty to be good for her. She gets tired, and pushes on. She gets smacked around and then gets back up.
Merovin is a world realistic enough to be plausible, unusual enough to be interesting, and hopeful enough to keep you turning the page. The story, which to me was just a tool to provide exposition for Jones and her personality, was tight, tricky, and assembled in a logical way. Perhaps the only real weakness in this book was how thinly Mondragon was defined. A little too mysterious.
This wasn't, as they say, Shakespeare, but it was a fun weekend read, and it absolutely whet the appetite for more of the same. I recommend it to anyone who wants a gritty adventure story with good guys who deserve your support.
May 15, 2025
This was a book that had to do a lot of heavy lifting. (And succeeded.)
So back in 1979, the first shared world anthology, , appeared on bookstore shelves and was remarkably successful, and spawned, in addition to a good dozen sequels, many of which Cherryh contributed to herself, a whole host of imitators including but not limited to , and , several of which, again, featured contributions by Cherryh.
And Cherryh also decided it would be a good idea to start up her own shared world, recruiting other authors to write stories set in a particular corner of her Alliance-Union universe. And this book, Merovingen Nights, was the novel she wrote to establish the setting.
(And, n.b., I've never actually read any of the half dozen or so shared world anthologies that followed on from this book, but maybe someday I'll have to track them down.)
So, anyway ...
The setting is a mostly-abandoned colony world called Merovin, currently operating at a relatively low tech level -- they have some internal combustion engines, the occasional handgun or rifle, and a few extremely rich folks might actually have electric lights, but most people are living something closer to a 19th Century existence. The setting of the novel is the canal-crossed city Merovingen (about which more anon). Our protagonist is one Altair Jones, a young woman scraping a chancy living operating a skip in Merovingen's canals, who is surprised when a (young, handsome and naked) man, having been unceremoniously pitched off of a bridge or balcony, splashes into the noisome water right next to her boat. Naturally, she rescues him; naturally, complications ensue; and naturally, before the story's end, she'll find herself drawn into all manner of tricksy maneuvers amongst both the highest and lowest echelons of Merovingen society.
And naturally, it's a great read! (Which, as an aside, was apparently a very loose rewriting of Cherryh's novella "A Thief in Korianth", which first appeared in , edited by ; but that story was fantasy, not SF, and instead of a naked man, Jensy, the protagonist, picked something else entirely from the waters.)
And while Altair and her mysterious passenger are great characters, the real star of the show is the city of Merovingen itself, a great, sprawling pile of a place, sort of like of Lankhmar and Venice had a baby. And the book itself includes about 50 pages of assorted maps, essays and historical notes to help establish the setting for those other authors who'd be contributing to the shared world volumes.
So back in 1979, the first shared world anthology, , appeared on bookstore shelves and was remarkably successful, and spawned, in addition to a good dozen sequels, many of which Cherryh contributed to herself, a whole host of imitators including but not limited to , and , several of which, again, featured contributions by Cherryh.
And Cherryh also decided it would be a good idea to start up her own shared world, recruiting other authors to write stories set in a particular corner of her Alliance-Union universe. And this book, Merovingen Nights, was the novel she wrote to establish the setting.
(And, n.b., I've never actually read any of the half dozen or so shared world anthologies that followed on from this book, but maybe someday I'll have to track them down.)
So, anyway ...
The setting is a mostly-abandoned colony world called Merovin, currently operating at a relatively low tech level -- they have some internal combustion engines, the occasional handgun or rifle, and a few extremely rich folks might actually have electric lights, but most people are living something closer to a 19th Century existence. The setting of the novel is the canal-crossed city Merovingen (about which more anon). Our protagonist is one Altair Jones, a young woman scraping a chancy living operating a skip in Merovingen's canals, who is surprised when a (young, handsome and naked) man, having been unceremoniously pitched off of a bridge or balcony, splashes into the noisome water right next to her boat. Naturally, she rescues him; naturally, complications ensue; and naturally, before the story's end, she'll find herself drawn into all manner of tricksy maneuvers amongst both the highest and lowest echelons of Merovingen society.
And naturally, it's a great read! (Which, as an aside, was apparently a very loose rewriting of Cherryh's novella "A Thief in Korianth", which first appeared in , edited by ; but that story was fantasy, not SF, and instead of a naked man, Jensy, the protagonist, picked something else entirely from the waters.)
And while Altair and her mysterious passenger are great characters, the real star of the show is the city of Merovingen itself, a great, sprawling pile of a place, sort of like of Lankhmar and Venice had a baby. And the book itself includes about 50 pages of assorted maps, essays and historical notes to help establish the setting for those other authors who'd be contributing to the shared world volumes.
April 17, 2019
Al avanzar la lectura recordé que lo había leído hace muchos años, tanto que ya casi no recordaba nada de la historia. Interesante y entretenida, ambientada en una especie de Venecia renacentista más negra y criminal.
July 9, 2011
This must have been the first book I read by C.J Cherryh. I distinctly remember reading it and the gut-deep feeling it evoked, but didn't recall anything about the characters or plot. I also didn't realize that it was by one of my favorite authors, so I can only guess I read it before any of her other books and didn't put two and two together.
I stumbled across the book again this week and remembered the cover but nothing inside, so decided to reread it. Despite pretending to be science fiction, this book is just a really good fantasy tale of a spunky heroine in a medieval Venice-like environment. It's "science fiction" the same way the Pern books are, but is vastly superior in writing, characters, and plot.
I stumbled across the book again this week and remembered the cover but nothing inside, so decided to reread it. Despite pretending to be science fiction, this book is just a really good fantasy tale of a spunky heroine in a medieval Venice-like environment. It's "science fiction" the same way the Pern books are, but is vastly superior in writing, characters, and plot.
August 1, 2011
This book started out really well, with a fantastic world and excellent characters. Altair Jones is an original creation - fierce and uncompromising, a girl not to be trifled with. The world is very convincing, with many details about what it is like to be a pole boater, the dialect they use, all portrayed very directly. I could hear and smell what was going on.
Like some of C J Cherryh's other books, this one got bogged down with the details of the shifting relationships between the characters. Should they trust one another? How do they feel about one another? And the climax that reveals the reasons behind their actions fell rather flat.
Not a bad book, but not as good as - say Hellburner or Downbelow Station.
Like some of C J Cherryh's other books, this one got bogged down with the details of the shifting relationships between the characters. Should they trust one another? How do they feel about one another? And the climax that reveals the reasons behind their actions fell rather flat.
Not a bad book, but not as good as - say Hellburner or Downbelow Station.
January 23, 2023
The appendix was very interesting.
The novel itself was not.
The novel itself was not.
March 1, 2018
I read this in swedish but the swedish version is not in the database. Inspiring and different worldbuilding in this book that made me wanting for more. The writing style in this book was very different from other books I have read, mostly for better but partly for worse. The best thing about this book was how much fun was pressed into so little space. There are too few sci-fi/fantasy books that are not really long or part of a long series. I liked the protagonist, a female that was nicely balanced between being human and being independent. My one complaint, that made the book a strong 3 instead of 4 for me, was that certain things were left unexplored (that definitely should have been explored). Things that was hinted at being of great importance but then never really answered.
August 20, 2024
Love a city-of-canals-and-deltas with small boats! The plot was fairly non-existent, but the boats were very very good, and the post-apocalyptic flooded city was such an excellent setting that it didn’t really matter.
July 10, 2010
This novel set down the "rules" for the Merovingen shared world series that appeared around the same time as the first Thieves' World series and as such were on the store shelves when I first started reading SF and Fantasy. (Just looking at a cover by Tim Hildebrandt is enough to make me utterly weak with nostalgia.)
Fans of Ellen Kushner's Riverside should check this out. It's a bit more skullduggery and RPG sourcebooky than Kushner, but Cherryh's prose is pretty phenomenal.
Fans of Ellen Kushner's Riverside should check this out. It's a bit more skullduggery and RPG sourcebooky than Kushner, but Cherryh's prose is pretty phenomenal.
July 8, 2011
Fascinating setting, engaging protagonist, intriguing plot...lukewarm ending.
July 15, 2018
Hoy en día, este es un libro de esos que no se consiguen así que eso me da varios dolores de cabeza porque, primero, esto es una serie más tirando a la fantasía que al sci-fi (salvo por el pasado de Merovigen), y segundo, es parte de la serie del universo Alianza-Unión siendo un mundo que fue parte de la Unión.
Esta es la historia de Altair Jones, una chica pobre en su barca (skip) que un día rescata a un hombre llamado Mondragon, que arrojaron de uno de los innumerables puentes de su ciudad al agua para asesinarlo. Mondragon pertenece a la clase alta y, estar allí en los suburbios más bajos le dificultará la tarea de regresar a su hogar cuando los asesinos andan al acecho.
Altair, como cualquier personaje de Cherryh, pasa a conocer la completa desconfianza hacia los tratos que le pueden ofrecer y a mirar sobre el hombro incluso a sus amigos, el problema es: el clímax de la historia no suena a clímax. Es un enredo de subir, trepar, saltar, explotar, y las voces de remo a la que uno no está habituado aunque exista una guía de ello, me apabullan. Otra vez, otra chica, se enamora de un rubiecito (¡basta!) y el rubiecito apenas la registra y de nuevo, muy típico de ella, la chica tiene más carácter que su compañero.
La ciudad en la que vive Altair es una suerte de Venecia en otro planeta, recubierta de puentes y más puentes debido a numerosas inundaciones años antes. Existen otras ciudades con mayor suerte y sus propios estilos, hay una ciudad con nombre oriental, está Signeury que es donde reside la autoridad y hay un colegio, New Hettek que es una ciudad poderosa que aspira a ser capital... no todo es pudredumbre de agua.
El final es algo abierto que perfilaba a ser algo muchísimo mejor, pero como dije, no es una maravilla. Alguien arriba mencionó algo de las intrigas de Merovigen y le diría que si eso lo impresiona es porque no leyó "Cyteen". "Rimrunners" es un poquito mejor que esto, "Chanur" lo supera en cuanto a intrigas, "Cyteen" es su cúspide. Lo malo es que por ser una serie de los '80 cuesta horrores conseguirla.
Es interesante ver hacia el final como Cherryh creó desde los vestuarios que utilizarían a las distintas monedas, la historia del planeta, cómo los humanos lo abandonaron, las distintas religiones, las zonas geográficas, etc. Sumamente detallada y un ejemplo para cualquier escritor.
Esta es la historia de Altair Jones, una chica pobre en su barca (skip) que un día rescata a un hombre llamado Mondragon, que arrojaron de uno de los innumerables puentes de su ciudad al agua para asesinarlo. Mondragon pertenece a la clase alta y, estar allí en los suburbios más bajos le dificultará la tarea de regresar a su hogar cuando los asesinos andan al acecho.
Altair, como cualquier personaje de Cherryh, pasa a conocer la completa desconfianza hacia los tratos que le pueden ofrecer y a mirar sobre el hombro incluso a sus amigos, el problema es: el clímax de la historia no suena a clímax. Es un enredo de subir, trepar, saltar, explotar, y las voces de remo a la que uno no está habituado aunque exista una guía de ello, me apabullan. Otra vez, otra chica, se enamora de un rubiecito (¡basta!) y el rubiecito apenas la registra y de nuevo, muy típico de ella, la chica tiene más carácter que su compañero.
La ciudad en la que vive Altair es una suerte de Venecia en otro planeta, recubierta de puentes y más puentes debido a numerosas inundaciones años antes. Existen otras ciudades con mayor suerte y sus propios estilos, hay una ciudad con nombre oriental, está Signeury que es donde reside la autoridad y hay un colegio, New Hettek que es una ciudad poderosa que aspira a ser capital... no todo es pudredumbre de agua.
El final es algo abierto que perfilaba a ser algo muchísimo mejor, pero como dije, no es una maravilla. Alguien arriba mencionó algo de las intrigas de Merovigen y le diría que si eso lo impresiona es porque no leyó "Cyteen". "Rimrunners" es un poquito mejor que esto, "Chanur" lo supera en cuanto a intrigas, "Cyteen" es su cúspide. Lo malo es que por ser una serie de los '80 cuesta horrores conseguirla.
Es interesante ver hacia el final como Cherryh creó desde los vestuarios que utilizarían a las distintas monedas, la historia del planeta, cómo los humanos lo abandonaron, las distintas religiones, las zonas geográficas, etc. Sumamente detallada y un ejemplo para cualquier escritor.
October 26, 2023
The original book of the Merovingen Nights series (part of the Alliance-Union universe). Merovin is a fascinating world, shut off from the rest of human space by the alien race the sharrh, via military interdiction and a treaty with Union. The main city of Merovingen is like an early modern Venice with canals threading through it, and political and religious factions shifting and flowing like the canals. There are small motors and guns but any technology beyond that is curtailed for fear of igniting the ire of the sharrh.
A young, poor woman canal-boat driver named Altair saves a high-born man named Thomas from attempted murder and gets embroiled in that political and religious situation, none of which she really understands. With all of that you’d be justified in thinking the story would be amazing. It’s not. There is a fifty-page appendix at the end of the book that explains all that above in great detail, and it is, quite frankly, more interesting than the story itself. Hardly any of the above is explained in the story itself (should you read the appendix first?), so the reader is left trying to make sense of the action and motivations of the main characters, which only culminates in a flat, humdrum ending that hardly makes the preceding thin plot worth it. The majority of the story is self introspection by the main character, and once again, as in other stories by Cherryh, that main character is sort of a backwoods hick. It’s sort of like listening to Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn (without the racism) stuck in a highborn world he/she knows little to nothing about. It’s a tactic Cherryh has used like four times now in some of her Alliance-Union books. One time was cute, effective, and unique. Twice made an important and endearing theme. Four times? I’m over it. And the interchanges between Altair and Thomas are mostly sluggish and bland, accentuated by a momentary sexual-tension shouting match.
It’s a gorgeous world, it really is. The plot here was just a dud, in my opinion. There are seven subsequent books, anthologies of short stories written by other authors (fan fiction, if you will) and edited by Cherryh, that continue in this world. I look forward to checking those out to see if things get fleshed out better by others.
A young, poor woman canal-boat driver named Altair saves a high-born man named Thomas from attempted murder and gets embroiled in that political and religious situation, none of which she really understands. With all of that you’d be justified in thinking the story would be amazing. It’s not. There is a fifty-page appendix at the end of the book that explains all that above in great detail, and it is, quite frankly, more interesting than the story itself. Hardly any of the above is explained in the story itself (should you read the appendix first?), so the reader is left trying to make sense of the action and motivations of the main characters, which only culminates in a flat, humdrum ending that hardly makes the preceding thin plot worth it. The majority of the story is self introspection by the main character, and once again, as in other stories by Cherryh, that main character is sort of a backwoods hick. It’s sort of like listening to Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn (without the racism) stuck in a highborn world he/she knows little to nothing about. It’s a tactic Cherryh has used like four times now in some of her Alliance-Union books. One time was cute, effective, and unique. Twice made an important and endearing theme. Four times? I’m over it. And the interchanges between Altair and Thomas are mostly sluggish and bland, accentuated by a momentary sexual-tension shouting match.
It’s a gorgeous world, it really is. The plot here was just a dud, in my opinion. There are seven subsequent books, anthologies of short stories written by other authors (fan fiction, if you will) and edited by Cherryh, that continue in this world. I look forward to checking those out to see if things get fleshed out better by others.
April 9, 2021
This book was like nothing I've ever read before. I picked it up at a book sale because at first glance it reminded me of the Westmark trilogy by Lloyd Alexander, which was my favorite when I was a teen. I was not expecting this to be a sci-fi series at all. It was everything I could ever want right from the start -- a fantasy adventure tale at its core with a tantalizing hint of sci-fi.
I love world-building, and C.J. Cheryh definitely does that. As a reader, you are dumped right in the middle of Merovin. Which can lead to some confusion as you sort out the details of this planet. But that's also part of the fun. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters, though I was ambivalent about Mondragon despite the book trying to convince me that he's good and important. I found him annoying and boring quite often. Besides that, there's nothing to critique except...
1. The appendix
Read it first, before you even attempt to start the book. I read the first chapter, then decided to pause and read the entire appendix. Afterward, I restarted the book from the beginning. It helped me better understand the complex world without getting confused or frustrated, which is what happened with my first read of Chapter 1.
Verdict
Highly recommend! This book was extremely immersive.
So, who would enjoy this book?
Anyone who, like me, can't get enough of fantasy novels with complex worlds (that don't revolve around sexualized characters and bodice-ripping. Though there are a few sex scenes in the beginning of this book. But they are fairly tame). If you just want to follow characters along for a rollicking adventure, this is for you.
I love world-building, and C.J. Cheryh definitely does that. As a reader, you are dumped right in the middle of Merovin. Which can lead to some confusion as you sort out the details of this planet. But that's also part of the fun. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters, though I was ambivalent about Mondragon despite the book trying to convince me that he's good and important. I found him annoying and boring quite often. Besides that, there's nothing to critique except...
1. The appendix
Read it first, before you even attempt to start the book. I read the first chapter, then decided to pause and read the entire appendix. Afterward, I restarted the book from the beginning. It helped me better understand the complex world without getting confused or frustrated, which is what happened with my first read of Chapter 1.
Verdict
Highly recommend! This book was extremely immersive.
So, who would enjoy this book?
Anyone who, like me, can't get enough of fantasy novels with complex worlds (that don't revolve around sexualized characters and bodice-ripping. Though there are a few sex scenes in the beginning of this book. But they are fairly tame). If you just want to follow characters along for a rollicking adventure, this is for you.
August 8, 2020
Ich hätte die 70 Seiten Anhang vielleicht vorab lesen sollen O.o
Gutes, detailverliebtes Worldbuilding einer Fantasy-Sci-Fi-Welt. In einer stark an Venedig angelehnten Stadt auf einem fernen Planeten gerät die junge Altair in die Machtkämpfe der Herrschenden. Dem Jugendbuch muss man zugute halten, dass es die Hauptfiguren, so anstrengend sie teilweise auch sind, genau deshalb glaubwürdig präsentiert. Würde ich ein Buch über mein sechszehnjähriges Ich lesen, hätte meine Stirn viele tiefe Falten.
Da es sich um den Auftakt einer Reihe handelt, nimmt die Geschichte erst spät richtig Fahrt auf und ich denke, dass da inhaltlich noch sehr viel kommen kann. Aufgrund der Dauer, die ich an dem Roman gelesen habe, ist mir nicht mehr alles so präsent, die Welt als solche empfinde ich als spannend und interessant gestaltet. Es gibt umfangreiche Karten, es gibt durchaus komplexe Beziehungen und Strukturen in der Gesellschaft, C.J. Cherryh machte sich damals sichtbar viele Gedanken.
Ob ich die Reihe weiterverfolge, kann ich noch nicht sagen. Noch lange wird mir aber in Erinnerung bleiben, dass der Verlag mitten im Roman eine Doppelseite mit Maggi-Werbung platziert und sich sogar die Mühe gemacht hat, das in einem Kontext der Handlung einzubinden :-D
Gutes, detailverliebtes Worldbuilding einer Fantasy-Sci-Fi-Welt. In einer stark an Venedig angelehnten Stadt auf einem fernen Planeten gerät die junge Altair in die Machtkämpfe der Herrschenden. Dem Jugendbuch muss man zugute halten, dass es die Hauptfiguren, so anstrengend sie teilweise auch sind, genau deshalb glaubwürdig präsentiert. Würde ich ein Buch über mein sechszehnjähriges Ich lesen, hätte meine Stirn viele tiefe Falten.
Da es sich um den Auftakt einer Reihe handelt, nimmt die Geschichte erst spät richtig Fahrt auf und ich denke, dass da inhaltlich noch sehr viel kommen kann. Aufgrund der Dauer, die ich an dem Roman gelesen habe, ist mir nicht mehr alles so präsent, die Welt als solche empfinde ich als spannend und interessant gestaltet. Es gibt umfangreiche Karten, es gibt durchaus komplexe Beziehungen und Strukturen in der Gesellschaft, C.J. Cherryh machte sich damals sichtbar viele Gedanken.
Ob ich die Reihe weiterverfolge, kann ich noch nicht sagen. Noch lange wird mir aber in Erinnerung bleiben, dass der Verlag mitten im Roman eine Doppelseite mit Maggi-Werbung platziert und sich sogar die Mühe gemacht hat, das in einem Kontext der Handlung einzubinden :-D
July 30, 2023
Slow going, grossly over-written ... lots of American stylised introspection rather than story telling - the fact that a book which contains 300 pages devotes 50 of them to superfluous appendices and maps should ring warning bells. If the author needs to do this much to fill you in on the background to a story, there's something very wrong with their storytelling skills.
Maybe it's the author's intention to launch into other stories of this fantasy world, but please, if you're trying to sell a book, treat the reader with some respect and not merely as the target for your next marketing exercise. Build absorbing characters, take the reader into their world (and not through regular reference to appendices), create a sense of place, of culture and atmosphere which is organic to the story itself.
Tedious, lacking mystery, spells out the bloody obvious.
Avoid.
Maybe it's the author's intention to launch into other stories of this fantasy world, but please, if you're trying to sell a book, treat the reader with some respect and not merely as the target for your next marketing exercise. Build absorbing characters, take the reader into their world (and not through regular reference to appendices), create a sense of place, of culture and atmosphere which is organic to the story itself.
Tedious, lacking mystery, spells out the bloody obvious.
Avoid.
August 6, 2021
I think CJ Cherryh is a fantastic writer, and this book didn’t change my mind, in spite of the rating I gave it. It’s just that it didn’t live up to what I imagined it was going to be. It was very interesting in that the world she creates here is so fully developed, yet I couldn’t find myself very interested in what happened to the characters. I didn’t really feel any connection with them. All this said, I may still buy the next book in the series. My understanding is that there will be stories set in the same city in which this book was set, but written by different authors, and using different characters. I think it’s worth a read if you like CJ Cherryh, it just wasn’t among my favorites of her books.
February 8, 2019
7/10. Media de los 13 libros leídos de la autora : 8/10
Me llevo yo bien con la Cherry. Casi siempre entretenida de leer, me quedo con “Hermanos de tierra” o “Paladín”. Y de series la de Citeen (la de Chanur tb está bien). La chica ha ganado creo que 4 Hugos, que no es poco.
Solo me ha defraudado suyo “La puerta de Ivrel”.
No llegué a empatizar mucho ni con Merovingen ni con su joven protagonista Altair. Pero vamos, que a tenor de la nota que le puse en su día se dejó leer agradablemente.
Me llevo yo bien con la Cherry. Casi siempre entretenida de leer, me quedo con “Hermanos de tierra” o “Paladín”. Y de series la de Citeen (la de Chanur tb está bien). La chica ha ganado creo que 4 Hugos, que no es poco.
Solo me ha defraudado suyo “La puerta de Ivrel”.
No llegué a empatizar mucho ni con Merovingen ni con su joven protagonista Altair. Pero vamos, que a tenor de la nota que le puse en su día se dejó leer agradablemente.
January 17, 2020
Interesting world. I wish I had read the Appendix at the end before reading the story. I was left feeling as though this was a prequel and these characters would be ones we would grow to know better and would appreciate having this glimpse into when they met, but I didn't really see how their relationship evolved otherwise.
August 2, 2022
Cherryh kept the action going throughout the story. There were times where I really wanted a rest moment, but I’m not sure if that was for the development of the characters or just because I felt for them.
I would have loved to have seen more of the relationship between Mondragon and Altair though.
I would have loved to have seen more of the relationship between Mondragon and Altair though.
June 28, 2025
There's some deft worldbuilding here, and the author spins an exciting yarn. The romantic bits are a bit formulaic, however, especially initially, and there is sometimes perhaps an overindulgence in hard-to-follow in-world descriptions of places, boating, or navigating the strange canals of Merovingen.
These are minor quibbles, however - this is great stuff.
These are minor quibbles, however - this is great stuff.
May 12, 2019
3.5* Interesting story and satisfying stand alone novel. It also comes with a completely built "world" set out in a detailed Appendix, for follow-on Merovingen anthologies. Of note, the appendix reveals this book/world is part of the Union-Alliance universe.
October 27, 2022
Imaginative adventure story set in a cosmic backwater - a world that has backslid into an earlier phase of technological development as a result of far-off galactic politics isolating it. Full review:
October 23, 2023
I really like this series; these are books I come back to over and over. The characters are interesting and the setting is marvelous. The feel of Merovingen is something I've tried to capture in roleplaying games several times, with limited success.
September 8, 2019
Der Weltenbau war so interessant. Die Story dann aber weniger.
March 14, 2020
4.5 Stars. Very fun read with very rich world building. I felt like I was in Merovingen and that there were many layers I'd like to explore.
May 22, 2020
A nice, easy re-read. Not as entertaining as I remember, though. A bit too much random running around.
April 18, 2024
Enjoyed the fast paced thriller amidst Cherryh's detailed world building. Underrated author worth returning to.
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