Cyteen by CJ Cherryh

1. Structurally, this book is perfect, and that surprises me because I don’t often find myself structuring a story like this—or even appreciating this type of structure. It’s certainly something that I will have to try. Okay, let me stop and explain this structure. This is a six hundred and eighty page novel, with only fourteen chapters—so, the chapters are very long, except the first. Each chapter is divided into sections by roman numerals, containing from three to seventeen sections per chapter—the first chapter having only three, the rest having at least ten. Each section spans from a page to well over twenty pages. Almost all of the sections only concern one situation or character, or two when a conversation is center stage. Late in the novel, the few sections that jump between places and characters within the section really ramp up the tension. Typically, each new section shifts the scene or characters from the last section: introducing a new scene, conversation or action, and characters. In this way, each section is essentially a mini-chapter: containing a scene or story that has a traditional arc or cliffhanger. Each section focuses narrowly and really digs into the specifics of the situation. This works well because so much happens—a lot goes on in this novel. But all of it is offered up in these small, digestible sections that focus clearly on the elements important to the scene. That focus and specificity is what makes this tactic of quick scenes work so well here. This gives me that “one-more-turn” feeling Civilization and other turn-based video games are famous for—I want to read one more section before sleeping. And did I ever: last night I was up until 2:45 before turning off the light.

2. This structure lets Cherryh pace the novel well in the sense that she spends unequal time on any section and because there are so many sections, it doesn’t feel unnatural. Rather, by having longer and shorter sections, she is able both to spend an appropriate amount of time on each section, and to ramp up tension. Specifically, I think of one section near the end where Jordan does something very important and his two sons don’t know of it while they spend eleven pages discussing similar things. Through each of those pages, I’m growing more and more anxious, waiting for the shoe to drop. By drawing that conversation out, Cherryh allows tension to build, but it still fits in her structure nicely. In short, she doesn’t equalize the section lengths and instead follows the scene of each section to determine their lengths. And by spending an appropriate amount of time on each section, the whole is paced well.

3. Cherryh focuses each section through the old adage of never show the monster—in other words, do not over-describe. The theory here may be twofold: one, the reader is going to fill in more effective details from their own mind, and two, not all of the details influence the story, or are important to it, so by only giving the interesting details that are influential, the reader is not reading unnecessary fluff and the author can get into the important parts of the story right away. Cherryh follows this tactic by giving a couple interesting details, sparking the reader’s imagination, but then moving on to the action and letting the reader fill in the blanks. This is how she builds the world: slowly laying down details throughout the whole book—Novgorad is only really understood as a functioning city in the final chapter—and by aggregation of details within the reader’s mind, trusting the reader to connect the dots. And this engrosses and engages me. When a word like pedways is first dropped, I’m curious and I file it away until she explains it later—showing Justin in the Novgorod pedways in the last chapter, explaining both what they are and how people interact with them. It’s a series of clues that start to form a startlingly complete picture of the world. But she never just explains the whole thing: she never shows the monster, simply shows bits and pieces and lets the reader fill in the blanks in their own minds. She doesn’t just apply this tactic to the world though—it’s also applied to experiences and characters: Grant is tall and handsome and red haired and elegant, beyond that, nothing is known of Grant’s appearance. And those four descriptors are more than most characters have. Sam is buff and tall, Amy is long-faced, Maddy is shaped lustily—most characters, even main ones like Justin, Jordan, and Ari, only have one or two descriptors of their physical appearance. And this description tactic works well because it focuses the novel on their personalities, and let’s me fill in their looks from my own opinions and experiences. Brilliant description throughout.

4. The description works superbly except, of course, the eight page intro-info-dump. But even that I find myself sympathizing with and not being annoyed by because her Alliance-Union universe is unique and the setting for many of her books. In order to get the reader understanding important context and backstory, she uses the intro-info-dump. Most of her books appear to not be sequels of each other—this isn’t a series like A Song of Ice and Fire where each book directly follows the last—but some information is still helpful to the reader and lets Cherryh get to the story quickly. I still think Iain M Banks’ tactic of integrating the context into the story works better, and Banks’ Culture series is like this series in that any book can be read first in the series. But Cherryh does the best intro-info-dump I’ve ever read, because she applies this focusing tactic to the information given in the dump itself. It’s good here, and I think I may now see why so many authors utilize the intro-info-dump.

5. The character building is astoundingly effective. She describes the main characters through conversations and actions and internal monologue—though only some of the main characters receive space to monologue to themselves. Like Banks, Cherryh uses all three tactics on the main characters, two of the three on the secondary ones, and only one of the three on the tertiary ones. This effectively lets the reader know who the main characters are almost at the start of the novel. But Cherryh is incredible at giving each their own voice and responses, and keeping those consistent throughout without making characters boring or predictable. This also helps inform the reader the extent of Justin’s lack of balance when he does break from his usual cast of responses in the final chapter. I wish I could figure out exactly what she does to keep her characters so distinct and unique—even with Ari Senior and Ari Junior, who are so close to the same person—because I want to be as good as Cherryh. To take the example of the two Aris, first, Cherryh allows Ari Junior to have contextual differences from Ari Senior. Second, she allows these contextual differences to affect Junior in honest ways that make her different than Senior fundamentally, as shown through her actions—a desire to draw together and protect rather than separate and rule over, a willingness to attach herself and risk her own safety in order to help herself feel less lonely, et cetera. And third, these changes cause consequences that she has to deal with. In other words, Cherryh separates her characters through differences in knowledge, those differences causing different reactions and goals, and those goals and reactions integrating with other characters’ goals and reactions to cause consequences. Sort of like real life. And that’s really the strength of Cherryh’s characterization: she has them well defined and consistent in her own mind and stays true to that within the novel; and the characters seem realistic to real life—they have a few contrasting ideas that give them tensions, but not so many that they’re entirely philosophically inconsistent. Again, like most people. This is breathtaking character building.

6. The theme here discusses change over time. In a sense, it’s a study of "the sequel": that second generation, or third, past the founding of a culture or government or settlement. Through this study she discusses what affects a culture over the long term, and how people react to those changes. This discussion ties into technology, inhospitable space travel and communication, and long-term planning with unknown variables. For example, a quote from Ari Senior, addressing Ari Junior:

The human diaspora, the human scattering, is the problem, but Centrism is not the answer. The rate of growth that sustains technological capacity that makes civilization possible is now exceeding the rate of cultural adaptation, and distance is exceeding our communications. The end will become more and more like the beginning, scattered tribes of humans across an endless plain, in pointless conflict—or isolate stagnation—unless we can condense experience, encapsulate it, replicate it deliberately in CIT deep-sets—unless psychogenesis can work on a massive scale, unless it can become sociogenesis and exceed itself as I hope you will exceed me. Human technology as an adaptive response of our species has passed beyond manipulation of the environment; beyond the manipulation of our material selves; beyond the manipulation of mind and thought; now, having brought us out of the cradle it must modify our responses to the universe at large. Human experience is generating dataflow at a rate greater than individuals can comprehend or handle; and the rate is still increasing. We must begin compression: we must compress experience in the same way human history compresses itself into briefer and briefer instruction—and events on which all history depended rate only a line in passing mention.

Ultimately only the wisdom is important, not the event which produced it. But one must know accurately what those things are.

One must pass the right things on. Experience is brutal and an imprecise teacher at best.

And the time at which all humanity will be within reach, accessible to us—is so very brief.

You’ll see more than I can, young Ari.

This theme is quite applicable in our day-to-day lives. Long-term planning is always a crap-shoot and our best guesses can be completely invalidated by a technological leap, or a cultural upheaval. Because of this, Cherryh argues for doing the best we can, but also accepting what comes and being able to react and change. Contentment with one's lot in life, but still striving to better oneself and the world. She shows this through her characters.

7. Ultimately, this novel is spectacular. It doesn’t rely upon violence or sex—though there is some of that in there—it focuses on psychology. It becomes a fascinating character study of the main characters and cultures in a way that mirrors the world. Written by a Spokane author before Ruby Ridge, she definitely tapped into something of the time’s cultural consciousness in this novel in a deep way. To say that I love this book doesn’t seem to be enough. I wish I had written this book. Yeah, I’d change the intro-info-dump, and I’d tack another section or two of reflection onto the end. But even these things work with Cherryh’s voice and context. I feel so much loss at not having read Cherryh before 2016—if I had this influencing my life earlier, I would be a much more skilled writer today.

[Added 12 May 2016. 8. I now remember my main complaint: she starts out by saying over and over again how close Grant and Justin are, and how important Jordan is to them both—on a personal level. But she doesn't show this significance for far too long and I ended up having to take this on faith for what felt like a couple of hundred pages without seeing it. It was a case of too much telling and not enough showing. Which is odd because the rest of the book shows well. But eventually I understood their relationship with the secret language between the two and references they shared that set them apart from others. I just wish I would've seen it earlier.]