Cyteen

First edition, 680 pages

English language

Published May 1988 by Warner Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-446-51428-6
OCLC Number:: 16900887
ISFDB ID:: 2179

(3 reviews)

The Innermost nature of the human mind and heart becomes the key to an epic struggle for power...and a riveting story of politics and passions, manipulation and love, destiny and individual courage. Set in the universe of the Hugo Award-winning Downbelow Station, S.F. master CJ. Cherryh again brings us a wonderfully detailed world...and her most challenging and mature work to date.

CYTEEN is the story of Ariane Emory: brilliant, corrupt, a genius in genetics, psychology, rape, and blackmail. She dominates the Council of Nine, as head of the Expansionist Party of the Multiworld Union, and is despot of the territory Reseune, where her laboratories create the one product essential to Cyteen: people. They are the "azi," human workers and soldiers artificially grown, computer trained, and owned by Reseune, and hence Ariane Emory. After one hundred and twenty years of life and fifty years of rule, Emory is murdered. But not …

The Innermost nature of the human mind and heart becomes the key to an epic struggle for power...and a riveting story of politics and passions, manipulation and love, destiny and individual courage. Set in the universe of the Hugo Award-winning Downbelow Station, S.F. master CJ. Cherryh again brings us a wonderfully detailed world...and her most challenging and mature work to date.

CYTEEN is the story of Ariane Emory: brilliant, corrupt, a genius in genetics, psychology, rape, and blackmail. She dominates the Council of Nine, as head of the Expansionist Party of the Multiworld Union, and is despot of the territory Reseune, where her laboratories create the one product essential to Cyteen: people. They are the "azi," human workers and soldiers artificially grown, computer trained, and owned by Reseune, and hence Ariane Emory. After one hundred and twenty years of life and fifty years of rule, Emory is murdered. But not for long…

CYTEEN is the story of the Project: the plan to replicate Ariane Emory. Creating a genetic double is routine for Reseune's bio-technology, but nature is not nurture, and clones are still human beings. For the Project to succeed, Emory's followers have to subject the clone to every formative influence of the tyrant's life, keep her innocent of history, protect her from Emory's enemies, and oppress or silence anyone who might, even accidentally, disrupt the program.

CYTEEN is also the story of Ari: a little girl driven to solve a mystery she can sense, but not define. A child thrown into a storm of global upheaval when her creation is made public, she inherits a stranger's face and past, enemies and victims. She must wield her predecessor's power to save herself, even from people she loves. And to survive, she must find out if she's a puppet crafted by a dead megalomaniac—or the one person who can defuse a socio-genetic time bomb threatening to destroy her planet. For only Ariane Emory can save Cyteen…

5 editions

Lazyreader@bookrastinating.com reviewed Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh

Uncomfortable but hard to put down

5 stars

This author is brilliant. She's good at portraying complicated and changing relationships between people. She inserts sticky ethical situations without blatant moralizing. By the end of the book I still wasn't sure of the author's own opinion on her azi characters, who are a class of genetically engineered, mind-altered servants (slaves). There's a sexual assault and the rug-sweeping that goes on afterward is sadly too real.

This was published in 1989, so 34 years later some of the 'futuristic' technology is a little off: people still use payphones, for example. There's light-speed travel, but it's also possible to escape detection on a nighttime river boating trip as long as you turn off your running lights. Hilariously, she also kept those sunken living room conversation pits that were popular in the 70s.

My main complaints about this book are that I feel the plot didn't progress much in the third quarter, …

This author is brilliant. She's good at portraying complicated and changing relationships between people. She inserts sticky ethical situations without blatant moralizing. By the end of the book I still wasn't sure of the author's own opinion on her azi characters, who are a class of genetically engineered, mind-altered servants (slaves). There's a sexual assault and the rug-sweeping that goes on afterward is sadly too real.

This was published in 1989, so 34 years later some of the 'futuristic' technology is a little off: people still use payphones, for example. There's light-speed travel, but it's also possible to escape detection on a nighttime river boating trip as long as you turn off your running lights. Hilariously, she also kept those sunken living room conversation pits that were popular in the 70s.

My main complaints about this book are that I feel the plot didn't progress much in the third quarter, one of the two main characters was never given agency (not totally their fault), and I didn't much like the occasional political situation info-dumping. It also ends without resolving everything, but it's a trilogy so that's par for the course.

This would be an amazing work to discuss at a book club.

Michael Rawdon

rated it

March 21, 2014

Mignon

rated it

June 13, 2013

Subjects

Emory, Ariane (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
Cyteen (Imaginary place) -- Fiction

Subjects

Lists