James Nicoll Reviews

C. J. Cherryh’s 1980 Serpent’s Reach is a stand-alone science fiction novel. Serpent’s Reach is set in Cherryh’s Alliance-Union universe. Reach is part of the ​“Era of Rapprochement” set of novels; I am not sure what the Era of Rapprochement denotes.

Fifteen-year-old Raen a Sul hant Meth-maren is set for life. As a member of the Kontrin aristocracy, she enjoys wealth, status, power (as soon as she comes of age), and most importantly, agelessness. She will never die of old age.

Assassination at age fifteen is a definite possibility.

Centuries ago humans stumbled over the Majat home world in the Serpent’s Reach. First contact went poorly, as the Majat simply ate most of the unlucky would-be Union ambassadors. Union, presumably deciding the Majat were more trouble than they were worth, ceded the Serpent’s Reach to their rivals, Alliance. Once Alliance understood the Majat, they placed the entire region under quarantine.

The Kontrin Family established themselves in the Reach before the quarantine completely closed. The Family play intermediary between the hive-minded Majat and the rest of humanity; they are vastly wealthy as a result. Ageless themselves, they rule over Betas (who have normal lifespans) and the mass-produced azi slaves (who die at age forty). There is absolutely no reason this caste system, prudently managed, could not have survived for centuries.

The Ruil sept of the Meth-maren launches an ambitious bid to displace Raen’s Sul sept. The coup is almost entirely successful, at least initially. Only one Sul survives, a badly wounded Raen.

Alas for the Ruil, Raen manages to reach the nearby Blue Majat hive. The Blue Queen agrees to help Raen retake her family’s estate. In the violence that ensues, the Ruil are obliterated.

The Kontrin Council is not well pleased at this outcome. As Raen is only a minor, the Council exiles Raen from her home world. After all, one faction or another can always assassinate Raen later. It’s not as if one angry survivor could facilitate the end of the Kontrin way of life.

Too bad that Raen isn’t alone. She has allies: legions of disgruntled Betas and Majat whom the Kontrin do not understand or fear as much as they should. 

~oOo~

I am confident that my hardcover is the SFBC edition. I credit not sending that monthly order card back in a timely fashion.

Something I never noticed until I assembled a Cherryh checklist sorted by publication date. As far as I can tell, this is the first Cherryh whose protagonist is a woman. Gate of Ivrel, Brothers of Earth, Hunter of Worlds, The Faded Sun: Kesrith, Well of Shiuan, The Faded Sun: Shon’jir, Fires of Azeroth, Hestia, and The Faded Sun: Kutath feature powerful women, but their stories are told by men.

It’s not too hard to convince the Majat that humans are interesting not-food. Humans are quite aware that Majat are the sole source of some interesting trade goods. What did both Union and Alliance walk away from contact? Well, it might be that neither state is very adept at dealing with aliens, even essentially human aliens like the mri. It could also be that Union and Alliance got nervous as soon as they realized that there are functionally only four Majat, each individual quite possibly older than genus homo.

The azi are a legacy of the Union, which created the short-lived, carefully programmed designer workers as a stop-gap measure to compensate for Union’s small population. To quote from 1988’s Cyteen:

in practical terms — azi are ideally a one-generation proposition: their primary purpose is not labor, but to open a colonial area, bring it up to productivity, and produce offspring who will enter the citizen gene pool in sufficient numbers to guarantee genetic variety. (…)

(…) Reseune will oppose any interest which seeks to institutionalize azi as an economic necessity. In no wise should the birthlabs be perpetuated as a purely profit-making operation. That was never their purpose. 

Because Cherryh was inconsistent about dating, it’s hard to say with certainty how long after Cyteen that Serpent’s Reach is set. However, it’s not less than centuries. Therefore, Reseune’s azi were anything but a temporary measure and, as Cherryh wrote Serpent’s Reach before Cyteen, she was fully aware how things would work out for the azi.

I hate Union so much. About the nicest thing I can say about Union is that the Kontrin Family is somehow even worse. Union at least pretend that their caste system is a temporary measure, that the Roman Republic will be restored everyone will be citizens one day. The Kontrin would cheerfully maintain their system until the suns burned out, if they could.

How hard is it to set the Kontrin downfall in motion? To quote the Screen Rant Pitch Meetings guy, ​“super-easy, barely an inconvenience.” It turns out among the skills that immortals can hone is the ability to convince oneself that because things worked in the past, systemic inefficiencies are not quietly¹ accumulating, and the system will keep working forever².

It’s a credit to Cherryh that she could spin an engaging story in a culture many of whose on-stage characters are the sort of aristocrat whose head would look terribly dashing if mounted on the end of a pike.

Serpent’s Reach is available as part of the Deep Beyond omnibus here (DAW Books), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Kobo), and here (Words Worth Books).

I did not find The Deep Beyond omnibus at Bookshop US, Bookshop UK, or at Chapters-Indigo. 

1: In the sense sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears and going LAH LAH LAH I CAN’T HEAR YOU any time someone complains counts as quiet.

2: USA delenda est. I bet you thought I’d forget.