They say that you should choose the lesser of two evils and that better the devil you know. One would think that to be a perfect guideline when struggle for power between two great hakkikts unleashed a civil war among the kif species. After all, the rest of Compact space would have to deal with the winner, so it’s logical to try and put ‘your’ kif in power. However, for Pyanfar Chanur it’s not even a matter of choice: hakkikt Sikkukkut decided he would benefit from having Chanur and mahe allies at his side, so it’s either accepting his terms or almost sure death sentence. Pyanfar is walking across the thin ice now, trapped between Sikkukkut, his opponent Akkhtimakt and a hani official Rhif Ehrran, who would be happy to see Chanur downfall.Various political intrigues reach their peak in this book; the grand shoot-out at the docks of Kefk station is a type of climax that keeps you on the edge of your seat. But although it’s the only battle in the whole book, it doesn’t suffer from a lack of tension. When you’re dealing with kif, negotiations can be even more dangerous than a shoot-out. Especially if your interlocutor doesn’t trust you and his hallway is decorated with the heads of his enemies. And the flow of events puts a lot of pressure on the heroes: return of Dur Tahar and her crew creates lots of disputes about their fate, Pyanfar doesn’t know whether she could trust her allies, and badly wounded Chur is unlikely to cope with the stress of interstellar jump.Kif culture and kif mentality is still difficult to comprehend, both for Pyanfar and for the readers. However, they become even more interesting due to introduction of a new character, Skkukuk, a ‘gift’ to Pyanfar from Sikkukkut. He is a completely wild card, since no one knows whether he is Sikkukkut’s spy or a valuable ally. At the end, Skkukuk grows to be a very interesting character and one of my favourites.Sadly, but Tully, a significant character in ‘The Pride of Chanur’, is more of a background character in this one. However, other characters step forward. In the first two books, Pyanfar and Hilfy were the ones with the most fleshed out personalities, Khym joining them at the end of the first book. Now Chur and Geran go through a great character development, and Haral and Tirun show more of their personalities. Moreover, while Khym continues to break down gender stereotypes of ‘unstable males not proper for spacing’ and learns crew work, he also shows another side of him: being a backroom lawyer of Mahn clan, he’s not profane in politics and subtle intrigues. And after everything they went through, Hilfy and Pyanfar are not the ones they used to be: Hilfy becomes a much harsher person, her heart somewhat hardened by her suffering, while Pyanfar, surprisingly, becomes wiser and more acceptable of those not like her.
What do You think about The Kif Strike Back (1991)?
It took me a while to finish this one, mainly because it's difficult. A major part of the plot is "what are certain members of this alien race called the kif doing and planning to do?" and in Cherryh's inimitable way, the critters are so alien that they're extremely hard to understand. It doesn't help that the point-of-view character, Pyanfar Chanur, doesn't understand them either. Nor does that fact that *she's* also a nonhuman, although since she's vaguely lion-like she's a lot easier to get a grip on.But this is thinky sociopolitical SF, in which the protagonist, Pyanfar, is wrestling directly with the goals and plans of her own species, plus the insectoid kif, the mahendo'sat, and the newly-arrived (or arriving) humans - and the goals and actions of two or three other species are also alarmingly relevant. It's all move and counter-move and counter-counter-move, with the occasional supralight jump and dockside battle, and if you lose the thread of the action you practically have to go back and re-read whole chapters to figure out what's going on. The style is also a bit jarring, with a lot of dialogue and deliberate sentence fragments evoking the very stressful and hurried circumstances in which Pyanfar and her crew are trapped. And none of this helped by the fact that it's a middle volume and I read the earlier ones some time ago. Still, when I'm in the right mood I really like this stuff. One generally reads C. J. Cherryh for the exploration of alien points of view, and by the end I think I had something of a grip on how kifish society works and in increased appreciation of how hanish society works (and how it's being affected by being launched into interstellar space and commerce via another race's helping hand). Pyanfar is one tough captain, and one who considers the ultimate fate of her crew, her clan, and her whole planet very seriously. Now I've got to see if I can track down the last volume so I can find out how it all worked out.
—Text Addict
