Well of Shiuan by CJ Cherryh

1. So much better than the book right before this—changes that speak to a massive amount of growth as a writer between Gate of Ivriel and here. These notes are trying to figure out why I like this so much better and what changes Cherryh makes? I feel justified in this comparison as the four Morgaine stories are often published in a single volume, and this one starts seconds after the last one ends.

2. Gone are the awkward, fantasy word choices like “hi” being used for directions or spatial physical relation. She still uses a couple of awkward phrases, such as “did he turn around, he was sure to see her tears.” But that bothers me much less than the poor word choices of the last novel. The writing has gone from horrid to readable.

3. The story allows more of the interesting science fiction context to color the pages. This is still a fantasy tale purportedly set within a science fiction world, but here the science fiction is present in more than just the intro info dump. Some of the alien beings who created the gates are characters within the novel. The antagonist acts on-screen in ways that support the science fictional context—rather than the last novel where he is on-screen for a short time, then is later revealed as the antagonist and is said to be chasing the main characters but we don’t see any of it until he catches them; in other words, Cherryh shows him here. Also, Morgaine tells more to Vayne—of course he doesn’t understand it, but the reader can infer quite a bit. But most importantly, those ten thousand people who disappear before the last novel—those whose disappearance is still so significant on their original planet after one hundred years—ended up on this planet a thousand years ago, and that’s a big science fiction part to this fantasy tale. By allowing the science fiction to bleed more into the actual story within the pages, the interesting and more unique elements of this world are more apparent, and that intro info dump is finally believable by affecting the world.
—For instance, Roh locks a gate and leaves a hologram message—not quite “help me Obi-Wan Kenobi”, but the same tactic: Morgaine cannot figure how to unlock it, but she teaches Vayne some of the basic controls. She doesn’t teach him the what, merely the how. It’s like telling Vayne nothing of computers except how to control-alt-delete a computer off. He knows how to do what Morgaine wants him to, but not why it works or what he is doing, or even the name of the object he interacts with. His bafflement at Morgaine’s fiddling is wonderful for the reader because they can inherently infer what she is doing—trying some key commands and common passwords hopelessly in frustration at Roh locking her out—but Vayne doesn’t. It lets the reader feel like they know more than Vayne in a way that doesn’t rely on an omniscient narrator. In later books, Cherryh does this by having chapters devoted to different characters that are acting in the same situation, but this tactic is also really good.
—In short, here it is apparent that this is science fiction told as fantasy, where the last novel is really all fantasy.

4. This story is built well. Instead of having the exciting first action occur off-scene—like Vayne murdering his brother in the last book—Jherun discovers the tomb, confronts Roh, and slashes Fwar’s face on-scene, which directly leads to her falling into Morgaine and Vayne’s hands, also on-scene. It really helps to see the action in the story. Also, by spending so much time on Jherun at the start, the world is fleshed out by the time Vayne and Morgaine arrive. It’s a more memorable worldbuilding than the last novel’s listing of clans and their characteristics. When they get to new places, contrast shows what the new places are, rather than Cherryh having to tell too much.

5. The theme of this novel is less about identity and more about trust. Morgaine and Roh both use others for their means, but trust and assumptions are the central focus of the story. The Marshlanders and barrows men trust Morgaine to free them, but she plans to do nothing like that. Rather, she manipulates their hopes to use them brutally for her own ends. When they realize the truth about her, they attack her en masse and lose handily to her science fiction weaponry. She has a mission and duty, she is driven to forgo all others for the sake of her mission, and she cannot trust any person as she is the last survivor of her team. It’s a terrible portrait of somebody with a single-minded purpose. It’s a warning about obsession and the lengths one goes to with priorities, and it all rests on the questions of trust.

6. The one part that didn’t make much sense is Roh seeing through Vayne’s deception and still trusting him in the end. My assumption is that Roh thinks Vayne not a threat, which aligns with Vayne not killing him earlier. But it is striking and puzzling when Roh invites Vayne through the gate because it doesn’t feel like it quite fits. Is it because Roh considers Vayne simple and thinks he can manipulate or trust in that? Is it because Roh is busy with guiding the whole world's population through the gate? Is Roh flush with victory and over-confident in that moment?

7. In all, I enjoyed the book, but it’s not as profound as some of her others. This is an adventure tale wrapped up in a fairly evident warning against obsession. I guess it’s probably good young adult literature, but not very enlightening or complex for me today. I typically leave Cherryh novels contemplating things like intelligence, the echoes of our personal pasts, the importance of cultural history, or appropriate levels of restrictions on human behavior. Here, the novel left me with no real burning question or topic. But I’m willing to forgive this lack of an idea rolling around in my head days later because the story is so well told and the mood is believable and consistent. At least first novel’s horrid intro info dump's second half is absent here.