Cherryh, CJ - Gate of Ivrel

[oyceter]

An alien race once travelled everywhere via gates, but something in the technology made it so that a) the alien race didn't survive and b) the existence of gates still is a threat to the world.

Or, um, something like that.

Morgaine is a legend in Vanye's world, which explains Vanye's surprise when she appears in front of him after he's exiled from his clan. He becomes something like a bond-servant to her and her quest to destroy all the gates.

Unfortunately, I read this while my brain was going wonky, and as such, I don't remember much of it at all. The prose is rather old-fashioned in that old-fashioned fantasy way, and no one has a sense of humor. I really like Morgaine's type, but I had a difficult time getting in the story because of all the honor systems and assorted clans and the formality of the language, for some reason.

But I still want to read more books in the Morgaine cycle, just because of the ending of this book, which made up for much of the Clans and the language and etc.

Comments

[ellarien]

The Morgaine books were my first exposure to Cherryh; I found them hard going, but in a good way.

I think the problem with the gates was that (being FTL transport) they created causality violation and paradox when they were used to go backwards in time, and eventually it got bad enough to destabilize the Universe.

There's a related story in the short story collection that came out the other year, set at the time when the Gate network was starting to unravel.

[oyceter]

Ahhhh yes, causality! No wonder I was confused! That type of thing always makes my head just shut down -_-;;.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, which short story collection was that?

[ellarien]

Oh, sorry! The Collected Short Fiction of C. J. Cherryh.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

It's also in Visible Light, an earlier collection which has pretty much been subsumed by the Collected Short Fiction.