Cyteen

C. J. Cherryh's Cyteen is a book that I've been meaning to read for some ten years now. Recently, thanks to one of my friends finishing a readthrough of the book, I decided to give it a try. I was a bit worried that I'd lose interest midway through simply due to how many pages it ran and how staccato my reading time can be these days. As it turned out, I needn't have worried.

At no point during my reading of Cyteen did I feel any overwhelming urge to race ahead to the end; I found myself enjoying the journey far more than I did the destination -- which is good, as the book doesn't really end so much as run out of pages for you to turn. I found myself enveloped by the plot, the characters, the background story, the story behind the background story, the War of the Roses-esque family-come-planetary politicing and the subtle ways in which the reader is invited to see through the eyes of the protagonists. There's so much going on in Cyteen and you really do need to keep about three quarters of it in mind for when it becomes relevant later on in the narrative. Unlike many other books of this kind (A Game of Thrones for one example), the details don't feel like an oppressive chain around the reader's neck, dragging one down into the muck of authority self-indulgence; they arise naturally out of the narrative and gradually help the reader to understand the sins of the past and how they leave their mark on the future.

The past influencing the future at the book's core: the book's main protagonist Ari is (early-book spoilers follow) the genetic and sociological reincarnation of a truly brilliant woman who stood at the centre of a vast spider's web of science, intrigue and politics. Though we meet Ari's former self early on in the book, we're given only a surface read on her and essentially learn little more about her than her public face. It's through Ari's eyes that we start to discover what actually drove her predecessor and start to make sense of unfinished business that she left behind.

But Ari doesn't just serve as a lens through which we observe another character in Cyteen; she serves as a sort of living microcosm for the entire world that the author posits. Just like her, the world in which Ari lives has been designed from the ground up; planned out and given a heavy dose of sociological pre-programming in the form of the Azi, who are essentially a serf class of genetically engineered and psychologically conditioned humans created to help humanity expand faster than a normal birthrate and maturation cycle would allow. But this is not a heavy-handed critique of slavery, genetic manipulation and mind control; on the contrary, the question of what rights the Azi should have and whether they should exist at all is a complicated one, muddied by the needs of the many and debated by just a few. Sizable chunks of the book are devoted to two characters (an Azi and his non-Azi best friend) debating about the superiority of Azi thought -- which tends to be extremely logical, while sacrificing flexibility -- over citizen thought. No final answer is ever reached and the author never shows her hand and reveals to use that she comes down on one side of the issue or another. This breed apart is simply another part of the world we read about and they exist because they exist, not because they're meant to be an object lesson to the reader.

I'm not really talking much about the plot of this book. I'm not sure how I'd talk about the plot. There's just so much of it and it's all interconnected and all worth savouring. It's definitely a book for people who prefer a slow-build and a decent mental exercise; Cyteen heavily rewards the careful reader. This just comes at the cost of being very difficult to section apart in discussion.

The main flaw I found with the book were characters' lack of agency, up to a point. This flaw is elemental to the book, as much of it is about positioning one's self to take the action that needs to be taken (as well as what happens to those who fail to so position themselves, or those who try and cock it all up); and as such, there's no way it could be avoided without ripping out a great deal of the story's core. But it does mean that the reader does have to brace for those times when a protagonist sits around, trapped by circumstance, unable to take any action for him or herself.

Otherwise, I was very happy to have put Cyteen into the rotation. And I'll be checking out the sequel sooner rather than later.