C. J. Cherryh is Amazing

OK, I'm getting all fangrrl crushy here.

I have now read Invader and Inheritor, the second and third books of C. J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series.

I continue to be enormously impressed with Cherryh’s ability to realistically convey alien cultures. And I am, as you’d expect, delighted by the complex political negotiations, speculations and plots that are multiplying as we see more factions within the atvei and the humans on Mospheira. It’s fascinating to watch as the central protagonist and man between two worlds, Bren Cameron, human paidhi, or translator/diplomat/cultural observer, among the atevi, becomes more and more integrated into the atevi “world” while still consciously remaining human in perspective – understanding and communication without assimilation – and yet how aliened and isolated he has become from the human “world” on the island of Mospheira. And how, at the same time, it is becoming a necessity for him to start to build a bridge with the “world” of the spaceship humans.

And then there's the whole bit about watching a species with a completely different understanding and perception of mathematics than the one that human have, tackling an accelerated industrial and scientific revolution based on the human path of development.

And just to underline the issues of cultural difference and how they affect communication no matter how important it is and how hard you try, there's Bren's personal relationships with not only the atevi around him (Jago, Tabini, Ilsidi in particular), but also with ship-born and ship-bred Jason, paidhi-in-training to the atevi from the ship.

I’m just loving this series.

In a Tudor Frame of Mind

The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Alison Weir

I have a fascination with the Tudor and Elizabethan periods of English history. And I know I’m not alone in that. You only have to look at all the film and TV treatments of various key periods and people of the period to know that I’m far from the only one to obsess over this particular time and place.

However, while I’ve read a fair amount about the real Elizabeth I (as opposed to the various dramatic and fictionalised versions of her), I haven’t been quite so drawn to the more scholarly views of Henry VIII’s court until now. A recent re-viewing of the 1970 BBC miniseries about Henry VIII and his many wives made me want to dig a little deeper into the reality behind the various depictions of Henry’s women – Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr.

Weir’s book seems an excellent place to begin. Covering the lives of all six women – and of Henry himself in relation to them and to his dynastic ambitions - The Six Wives of Henry VIII provides well-researched pictures of each woman, her family and upbringing, the circumstances that brought to into Henry’s life, the nature of her relationship with the king and with other political and religious figures, the end of her marriage, and for the few who survived life with Henry (Anne of Cleves and Catherine Parr), their own later years.

One thing that I liked about Weir’s take on these women was her willingness to look at them as people who were trapped by the limitations placed on any woman, and especially on women of politically significant families, whether royal or noble, how this affected all of them, and most notably those – Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Parr –with extraordinary gifts of intellect and, in the case of Catherine of Aragon, leadership.

I suspect that one of these days I’ll follow up with a few more historical interpretations of the lives of these women (I’m particularly interested in an alternative view of Catherine Howard, who has always seemed, to me, to have had the worst reputation and the least defense), but this has certainly been an excellent and entertaining beginning.

Farwell to Vor

And now I have read the last of the Miles Vorkosigan novels. It took some time to locate Memory, as it doesn’t seem to have been reprinted nearly as often as the others in the series, And of course I had to wait until everything else had been read before I could read the last book of the series, Diplomatic Immunity.

It’s been a wonderful ride. Miles Vorkosigan is one of the few disabled science fiction heroes, and that’s struck a real chord with me from the beginning. Even after advanced medicine fixes most of the physical limitations caused by his brittle bone syndrome, he still thinks like a person with a disability – not unreasonable, since that’s what he grew up as, and that’s in part how the society he was born into and chose to remain in thinks of him – as a weakling a “mutant,” a damaged being, despite his courage and intelligence and political influence.

It’s a good ending, to see him established in his own country, happily married, a proud parent, with important work to do.

Ave atque Vale, Miles.

At least until I re-read your story again. Or Bujold decides she has something more to day about you.