(no subject)

[ellarien]

I just finished Cherryh's Conspirator, and am now very frustrated. Not that it was a bad book -- it wasn't, and I had a splendid time revisiting the feuding Atevi. The problem was that it ends on what -- if one is at all prone to getting absorbed in Atevi politics -- is a major cliffhanger, and I'll have to wait until at least late this year to find out what happens next.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

At least the next one is coming out late this year and not some other year completely....

[ellarien]

There is that.

I might not have been quite so aggravated if it wasn't for an accident of book design; the end comes at the bottom of a left-hand page, with several pages of notes starting on the facing page, so that the abrupt running-out-of-book came with almost no warning. I do think Cherryh usually provides a bit more closure per episode, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah. I see. I was thinking of her usual episodic closure.

I have a bad habit of going to the back of the book to find exactly how many pages so I can put the bookmark at exactly the halfway point. This is in many ways silly and risks spoilers for the ending of books, but it does tend to prevent the kind of surprise you describe.

[ellarien]

It isn't quite the usual pattern of mad scramble followed by breathing-space. It doesn't quite end in the middle of a firefight, but definitely at a moment of tension and change. Very disconcerting.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

The whole thing has become a soap opera to which, to my shame, I am completely addicted. I read the book Sunday...

[ellarien]

But it's the very best soap!

Buses are not as much fun as mecheiti, though.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

True.

But the first book (so long as you disregarded the first two unnecessary parts and started with Bren) is one of the great alien contact books - there is a disorientation you don't find anywhere else, even in Cherryh, except perhaps Hunter of Worlds - and I like to rec it as such. Unfortunately, nowadays you have to mention how long it goes on for, that you cannot really jump on at any stage, and that the original alienness gets diluted...