A review by quoththegirl
Brothers of Earth by C.J. Cherryh

4.0

I have to admit, my expectations were low for this book, based somewhat on the cover and somewhat off the spate of mediocre 70s scifi I've been reading lately. I had also never heard of Cherryh, which I'm now ashamed to admit, because she's won about a zillion Hugos and is fascinating in general. This novel is the first she wrote and is almost shockingly good for a debut (technically her Gate of Ivrel was published first, but she finished Brothers of Earth first). While it does suffer a little bit from the curse of Too Much Going On and some subsequent sensation of hurtling along through the first through chapters at unsafe speeds, overall the novel is skillfully and subtly handled. (Maybe a little too subtly on the politics, as I got pretty lost in the motivations of the different factions pretty early on.) The novel's greatest strength is the well-drawn and developing friendship between Kurt and Kta, with the culture-building a close second. Definitely worth a read, and I'm eager to read more by this author now that my ignorance has been remedied.