The Deep Beyond: Cuckoo's Egg / Serpent's Reach Book

C. J. Cherryh is the master of developing truly alien-seeming races and these two books, Serpent's Reach and Cuckoo's Egg, showcase her gifts beautifully. In both cases, she uses a human child to help her readers peel back the layers of mystery obscuring the alien cultures.

I was fourteen or fifteen years old when I first read Serpent's Reach. It was my first C.J. Cherryh novel and certain images stuck with me quite strongly for the next several decades'Raen hiding in the hive, the majat fighting. When I reread it more than 35 years later I discovered that I had forgotten all the parts that made the book truly interesting. The alien majat are important, but not nearly as interesting as the fascinating human population which has split into the ageless elites, the normal humans, and the short-lived cloned, azi'not to mention the humans from beyond the Reach that are seeking to expand trade with Raen's people. This is a great mystery which can't be understood without first coming to understand the players. It's well worth the journey.

Cuckoo's Egg is even more intriguing. It's the story of a wolf-like alien, Duun, raising a human boy, Thorn. The novel is about Thorn's education and as he learns, the reader learns about Duun's people. It slowly becomes apparent that Thorn is of critical importance to the politics of this alien world, but just why is the mystery that forms the core of the book. This is Cherryh at her best slowly uncovering the driving motivations of an alien race.