Cherryh, C.J. - Cuckoo's Egg
Sun, Oct. 10th, 2010 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterThorn is taken in as a baby and raised by Duun, a hatani who trains Thorn to be a hatani as well. I am still not entirely sure what a hatani is—it seems like some sort of combination of judge, super tracker/hunter, and master reader of emotions and motives. In short, almost all the stuff I tend to associate with good court intrigue and/or assassination and/or spy narratives. And although his hatani training makes Thorn different from everyone else, it doesn't explain why he doesn't look like anyone around him.
This book reminded me of Ender's Game, andcoffeeandink mentioned it reminded her of Octavian Nothing. All of them are about children used as experiments, some for purposes crueler than others; they are about living in a lie, being deceived by everyone, and being isolated from everyone. I think Ender and Thorn feel the pressure to succeed far more than Octavian, but Thorn and Octavian's loneliness and isolation is more real. Ender's Game is the fantasy version of the scenario while Octavian Nothing is the cruelest; Cuckoo's Egg strikes the balance in between where I can see it fulfilling some adolescent wishes (as Ender's Game did for me) but in making the psychological weight of the deception and Thorn's dependence on Duun much greater. Thorn is always more at a loss than Ender, and the reader feels just as lost as he does—either Cherryh's prose is particularly elliptical here, or it just seems that way to me because this is the book that started my grand Cherryh read.
On a superficial note, Thorn's constant worried monologues were a little difficult for me to read, partially because they were italicized and partially because we were so much in Thorn's head that I had a difficult time figuring out what exactly was going on outside of it.
Spoilers can't say can't
The payoff in the book, is, of course, the ending. I love love love the inversion of the alien invasion trope, which has always felt xenophobic to me. It's what also prompts the comparison to Ender for me: the aliens in Ender are hostile and the solution is to raise a kid to be the perfect killer and the perfect general, whereas here, the goal is to raise one of the aliens to try to understand them better. Obviously some of the difference is that the buggers attacked Earth first, but given how many narratives of alien contact start out with the aliens attacking Earth, this was particularly nice.
On the other hand, it would have been interesting if the lone human hadn't been white. They clone a human being to try to come to a better understanding of the entire human race, and surprise surprise, it just happens to be a white guy.
It also would have been nice had the lone memorable woman not been a spy sent out to destroy Thorn.
Also also, because I read this before reading more Cherryh SF, now I want to go back to see if we know whether the ship they discovered was Union or Alliance.
In conclusion: good ending and good take on a particular SF trope, but it doesn't feel quite as substantial as some other Cherryh's I've read.
This book reminded me of Ender's Game, and
coffeeandink mentioned it reminded her of Octavian Nothing. All of them are about children used as experiments, some for purposes crueler than others; they are about living in a lie, being deceived by everyone, and being isolated from everyone. I think Ender and Thorn feel the pressure to succeed far more than Octavian, but Thorn and Octavian's loneliness and isolation is more real. Ender's Game is the fantasy version of the scenario while Octavian Nothing is the cruelest; Cuckoo's Egg strikes the balance in between where I can see it fulfilling some adolescent wishes (as Ender's Game did for me) but in making the psychological weight of the deception and Thorn's dependence on Duun much greater. Thorn is always more at a loss than Ender, and the reader feels just as lost as he does—either Cherryh's prose is particularly elliptical here, or it just seems that way to me because this is the book that started my grand Cherryh read. On a superficial note, Thorn's constant worried monologues were a little difficult for me to read, partially because they were italicized and partially because we were so much in Thorn's head that I had a difficult time figuring out what exactly was going on outside of it.
Spoilers can't say can't
The payoff in the book, is, of course, the ending. I love love love the inversion of the alien invasion trope, which has always felt xenophobic to me. It's what also prompts the comparison to Ender for me: the aliens in Ender are hostile and the solution is to raise a kid to be the perfect killer and the perfect general, whereas here, the goal is to raise one of the aliens to try to understand them better. Obviously some of the difference is that the buggers attacked Earth first, but given how many narratives of alien contact start out with the aliens attacking Earth, this was particularly nice.
On the other hand, it would have been interesting if the lone human hadn't been white. They clone a human being to try to come to a better understanding of the entire human race, and surprise surprise, it just happens to be a white guy.
It also would have been nice had the lone memorable woman not been a spy sent out to destroy Thorn.
Also also, because I read this before reading more Cherryh SF, now I want to go back to see if we know whether the ship they discovered was Union or Alliance.
In conclusion: good ending and good take on a particular SF trope, but it doesn't feel quite as substantial as some other Cherryh's I've read.
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