Cherryh, C.J. - Angel with the Sword

[oyceter]

(possibly shelved under Merovingen Nights: Angel with the Sword?)

Altair Jones is a canaler in the under-city of Merovingen ("Merovingen lived, which was its own misfortune, just well enough not to die"). One day, a rich young man falls out of the sky from a bridge, and against her better judgment and all her instincts, she rescues him. She's soon drawn into some city-wide intrigue involving Mondragon, the aforementioned man.

I actually found the beginning of this book extremely accessible, which is unusual for me with Cherryh, largely because it's told in Altair's voice. She's not snarky exactly, but she's tough and a canal rat and a bit young in some ways, and I like her a lot. I was afraid that the book would end up moving to the high-class circles of Merovingen, in which Mondragon would have all the advantages of knowing the turf and Altair would be a fish out of water and stop being as proactive, but thankfully, this is not the case. While we do get to see a fair amount of Mondragon, he's very clearly The Boy and the damsel in the distress, which I love.

Does anyone know if Altair is POC or not? The book describes her as having a "dusky tanned face," and I can't figure out if the dusky is part of the tan or not.

Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea how the book ends, possibly because I read the latter half when I was severely sleep-deprived, uncaffeinated, and allergic to everything. (Speaking of which, Bay Area ppl, have the past few days been particularly bad for allergies, or is it just me?) So take it with a grain of salt when I say that it felt very fast and not entirely resolved. Also, I would have liked a bit more incluing about the world, though I suspect Cherryh didn't and left everything in a giant appendix because it was planned as a shared world (? is this standard practice for shared worlds?).

Comments

[estara.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this is standard practice, but the shared world actually exists, although I've always found that this is the best novel. The rest are anthology stories, by authors like Lynn Abbey, Mercedes Lackey, etc.
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&tag=mozilla-20&index=blended&link%5Fcode=qs&field-keywords=Merovingen
I do remember (although I did sell the anthologies after a while and only kept this novel) that the story occasionally gets picked up again in the following books.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

I think I had two of the follow-up anthologies at one point, but I always liked the first one best. I do think Altair is a POC; in fact, it seemed that the locals generally were. It seemed that Tom and others from other cities were less likely to be, although it also seemed like the original ethnic groups had mixed quite a bit by the time humans ended up on this particular world.