The Deep Beyond: Cuckoo's Egg / Serpent's Reach

by C.J. Cherryh

This omnibus volume combines two Alliance-Union novels: Hugo Award nominee Cuckoo’s Egg and Locus Best Novel Award nominee Serpent’s Reach.

In Cuckoo’s Egg:  They named him Thorn. They told him he was of their people, although he was ugly in their eyes, strange, sleek-skinned instead of furred, clawless, different. Yet he was of their power class: judge-warriors, the elite, the defenders. Thorn knew his difference was important—but not important enough to prevent murderous conspiracies against him, his protector, his caste, and perhaps against the peace of the world. But when Thorn finally learned what his true role in life was to be, that on him might hang the future of two worlds, then he had to stand alone to justify his very existence.

In Serpent’s Reach:  Raen a Sul Meth-maren was very young when the machinations of her distant kin erupted into a bloodbath. Years passed and Raen bided her time. Then, on a voyage to the outermost planet of the Reach, Raen encountered Betas with an intriguing tale to tell, an Azi unlike any other, and a Blue Warrior who remembered her contribution to the Hive mind. And she knew her time had come….

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Aliens, Fantasy

600 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2005

About the author

Currently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J. Cherryh has won four Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. She is the author of more than forty novels. Her hobbies include travel, photography, reef culture, Mariners baseball, and, a late passion, figure skating: she intends to compete in the adult USFSA track. She began with the modest ambition to learn to skate backwards and now is working on jumps. She sketches, occasionally, cooks fairly well, and hates house work; she loves the outdoors, animals wild and tame, is a hobbyist geologist, adores dinosaurs, and has academic specialties in Roman constitutional law and bronze age Greek ethnography. She has written science fiction since she was ten, spent ten years of her life teaching Latin and Ancient History on the high school level, before retiring to full time writing, and now does not have enough hours in the day to pursue all her interests. Her studies include planetary geology, weather systems, and natural and man-made catastrophes, civilizations, and cosmology…in fact, there's very little that doesn't interest her. A loom is gathering dust and needs rethreading, a wooden ship model awaits construction, and the cats demand their own time much more urgently. She works constantly, researches mostly on the internet, and has books stacked up and waiting to be written.

Reviews

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

And still another collection of 1980s Cherryh novels set in the Alliance-Union universe. This time, two somewhat longer books:

First, Cuckoo's Egg from 1985 -- this would have been another one that I bought when it first came out because I was already a big fan of Cherryh's, although for some reason I didn't read it as frequently as some of the others. (Also, at the time I wasn't sure if it actually was an Alliance-Union book, or if it was just a standalone SF novel; and despite its inclusion in this omnibus, I'm still not actually sure.)

The POV at first is one Duun, whose species Shonun and whose avocation is Hatani. Hatani are sort of wandering independent judges -- if you have a problem or a conflict, you can ask a Hatani and they'll resolve it for you; but be very sure before you ask, because (if they agree it's a Hatani matter), once asked they will resolve it for you, and you may not like their solution ... Duun has actually been mostly retired, but now he's engaged to raise an infant (whom he names Thorn); a weird, unsightly creature, pink-skinned, furless, flat-faced, with no decent teeth or claws to speak of. And raise him he does, and as Thorn grows older, we start to get scenes from his POV as well as he tries to live up to the very high expectations of his foster-father and also to figure out why he's so different from everybody else. The Shonunin are a species whose technology is currently roughly similar to early 21st Century Earth; they've just begun manned expeditions out into their solar system, when a weird alien ship appears, causing conflict and misunderstanding and the death of all of the aliens; and Thorn is roughly the clone of one of the dead aliens, created as a Hatani solution to attempt to bridge the gap between species before the weird aliens reappear asking what happened to their predecessors.

Second, Serpent's Reach from 1980. This one explicitly is Alliance-Union, but it's set a ways down the timeline, in a region (the Hydri Reach, also known as the Serpent's Reach) that has been entirely sealed off by the Alliance because one of the stars (well, a planet orbiting the star, but you know what I mean) is home to the Majat, a hive-minded (and therefore effectively immortal) race of giant insectoids who are weird. And who did establish some kind of relationship with the Kontrins (the human family who led the original settlement of the Reach) and who produce a number of uniquely useful and irreplaceable items (including some kind of substance that lets humans -- well, lets rich, important humans live more or less indefinitely. And now, 700 years after that initial contact & settlement, the Kontrins are divided into a number of families constantly scheming and plotting against each other, as shown in the opening bit when Raen a Suel hant Meth-Marin (henceforth just Raen) sees her entire family wiped out, then flees to a Majat hive for refuge and revenge and when that all goes tits-up, another 20 years pass and then the real story begins -- the status quo in the Reach having been effectively unsustainable for quite some time and Raen having a vested interest in finding the fracture points and knowing how to push them.

This is actually a pretty great book that I think got a bit overshadowed by coming out very shortly before Downbelow Station, the Cherryh book that won all the big SF awards. It's also Cherryh's first real deep dive into azi, the tank-grown, tape-trained, well, "slaves" is probably not the wrong word to describe them, several of whom are "recruited" (i.e. purchased) by Raen to aid her in her plans.

Again, I don't think I'd give this to someone as their first Cherryh book, but if you've read a few and want to dive deeper, you could do much worse.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since this book contains two seperate and unconnected stories, it makes sense to review them seperately.

The first is "Cuckoo's Egg", a hugo award nominee from 1985, and my first ever story by this author. I'm impressed. A new and interesting twist on a common SF theme with a continued sense of unfolding mystery from start to finish. The story stands on it's own but leaves itself wide open for a sequel or even an ensuing series but, apparently, this opportuity has not been exploited. (4 stars).

The second story is "Serpent's Reach" is the longer of the two although it need not have been. It takes far longer to get going, spending a large number of pages establishing the protagonist's background, the complex social and political systems, and the human relationship with the hive mind alien beings native to the system in which the story takes place. Eventually though the story does pick up and it draws you into the curious scenario. Unfortunately, the resolution is somewhat chaotic and unsatisfactory. (3 stars).

In both stories, the extensive world building and attention to detail stand out as being among the author's strong points. In the first, shorter story it seems almost wasted, like more should have been done with it. But in the latter, it seems that it was at the expense of the story itself and made if far longer than it need be. I can see why much of her works are series and I imagine they would work quite well; giving the author plenty of room to develop worlds and societies but not requiring her to drag out the story lines excessively in doing so.

I look forward to trying some more of her work at some point, recommendations welcome!

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The four stars are all for Cuckoo's Egg. Only problem was it felt like it ended too soon. I really liked the characters and Haras trying to come to terms with himself in an alien world.

Serpent's Reach is another matter. I never really understood what was going on. Even by the end. I almost DNF'd it, but finished it because I liked the first story so much. I still don't feel it was worth it to finish. I'd probably give it 1.5 stars, but I didn't want this rating to mar Cuckoo's Egg's rating.

[Howl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review is principally for Cuckoo's Egg, Serpents Reach deserves it's own.

Cherryh's classic confused young male protagonist in a position of very little power and occasionally great danger shows up again.

This book is all a build-up to the big reveal, which you can see at least part of coming ahead of time. There are context clues that let you figure out that Haras/Thorn is human and being raised by a person of a race that is not human from the very first pages. The key question is why? Which is a question that the protagonist asks over and over again and is denied the answer until the very last few pages of the book. There are a lot of nature vs. nurture questions being raised, along with the very practical ones of how an alien species would manage to successfully raise an infant of another to young adulthood without accidentally killing it. How much of the psychology of such a person would be driven by biology, and how much would be driven by the environment in which they were raised and the person who raised them.

These aliens are very un-alien in their motives and in their biology, which may partly be excused by the need for the protagonist to actually survive much past birth for the narratives sake. Unlike some of Cherryh's later aliens these are essentially humans with fur and claws. The culture is slightly different but the motives are very understandable unlike say Wave Without a ShoreWave Without a Shore where the alien motivations feel much less human.

I had read this before, so I knew some of the central elements of the plot, but 6 plus years had left it fuzzy, I had details wrong (and some invented out of whole cloth). You can see elements of the Foreigner series here (the destabilization that comes with rapid industrialization, the hatani as a somewhat equivalent to the Assassins Guild as a stabilizing force), along with other themes from the Union-Alliance universe of which this is technically a part, though you could hardly recognize it without the knowledge that it's being paired with Serpent's Reach which is quite likely the reason that I originally picked up this combo edition.

As a side note, do we think that a human male raised by aliens would discover masturbation on his own by 18 years old? In this book Haras/Thorn certainly experiences attraction and desire, to the point where he would have tried to have sex, or at least an intimate encounter with one of the shonuun, but how is that experience of desire shaped without any other humans around to be objects of desire? I don't necessarily have major problems with Cherryh's characterization here, but as someone in a male body, the genitalia are right there, and I feel that some experimentation might occur. Of course his relationship with Duun as father/mentor and effectively sole other person from infancy to age 16 would really distort that. Haras experiences attraction to and desire for Betan in a way that feels both logical and unexamined.

Why would he be attracted to a female shonuun instead of a male? Certainly Duun is the center of his universe, the platonic ideal to which he compares his human body (and finds himself wanting, something somewhat viciously reinforced by Duun at every turn). One way or another Haras is going to be deeply fucked up, by both shonuun and human standards, even more alone than the paidhi of the Foreigner series who at least has had a human upbringing.

And Duun's child-rearing methods leave a lot to be desired by modern human standards. Haras's entire childhood is one long episode of what can frankly be called child abuse, driven by Duun's desperate need to mold him into someone who can eventually navigate a shonuun/human interface (for reasons which are explained in the final big reveal). While this can be explained somewhat by this need, there's nothing here that says to me that Duun would not feel like this was an appropriate way to raise a shonuun child.

Still even Cherryh where I have some logical questions about the practicalities is pretty good and there's a lot to be said for books that make you think about the essentials of what it actually means to be human.

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 5 out of 5]

C. J. Cherryh is the master of developing truly alien-seeming races and these two books, Serpent’s Reach and Cuckoo’s Egg, showcase her gifts beautifully. In both cases, she uses a human child to help her readers peel back the layers of mystery obscuring the alien cultures.

I was fourteen or fifteen years old when I first read Serpent’s Reach. It was my first C.J. Cherryh novel and certain images stuck with me quite strongly for the next several decades—Raen hiding in the hive, the majat fighting. When I reread it more than 35 years later I discovered that I had forgotten all the parts that made the book truly interesting. The alien majat are important, but not nearly as interesting as the fascinating human population which has split into the ageless elites, the normal humans, and the short-lived cloned, azi—not to mention the humans from beyond the Reach that are seeking to expand trade with Raen’s people. This is a great mystery which can’t be understood without first coming to understand the players. It’s well worth the journey.

Cuckoo’s Egg is even more intriguing. It’s the story of a wolf-like alien, Duun, raising a human boy, Thorn. The novel is about Thorn’s education and as he learns, the reader learns about Duun’s people. It slowly becomes apparent that Thorn is of critical importance to the politics of this alien world, but just why is the mystery that forms the core of the book. This is Cherryh at her best slowly uncovering the driving motivations of an alien race.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5) For two books in a somewhat ugly omnibus, my expectations were low, but far surpassed. Cuckoo's Egg is brilliant, centered around a cross-species father-son dynamic with mysterious tensions that stay taut the entire time. It benefits from a small amount of familiarity with the overall Union-Alliance series, but generally stands alone. Serpent's Reach is a space epic approaching Dune proportions, reminding me of Cherryh's "Forty Thousand in Gehenna" and "Hammerfall," set in a quarantined portion of Alliance space. It requires much more familiarity with the overall Union-Alliance series to be made sense of, despite its action being relatively isolated from it, much like "Forty Thousand." I loved it; the wheels came off a bit at the end, but they came off in ways that were true to the story.

[J. J. Klejka J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic premise. Incredibly character driven, doesn't over explain unnecessarily, and the main character of the first story cries a lot (which I enjoy). Take note other scifi authors. Thank you whoever put this in the free library down the street from me!

[Pamela Baird · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunningly complex

Keep with this book. You will feel lost but don't give up. It will gradually start to knit together and make sense. Aliens and humans in a strange dance expressing the circle of life.

[Miriam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting reading, but not the best I have read from her.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

You think beyond yourself.

Other minds, other ways of living a reality. Cherryh has always been excellent at exploring ways of thinking on the verge of the incomprehensible.

[Julie Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved cuckooo’s egg. Haven’t read serpents reach

[Andrew J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cuckoo's Egg is fantastic.

[Lindsay Stares · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's two books in one! Two... completely unconnected books. According to Wikipedia, they take place in the same universe, but I didn't get that from reading them.


Cuckoo's Egg (1985)
Intriguing premise that never really goes anywhere, more of an extended character background than a novel in it's own right.

Serpent's Reach (1980)
Very cool world, interesting, if confusing, plot. Probably the best space-bug society I've ever seen.

A few further thoughts at Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

[Renmarie56 · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far, I'm liking this book slightly better than Downbelow Station in terms of the story. I liked Downbelow Station, but I find her writing really shines in this more intimate story. One aspect that's impressed me is how she manages to write about an alien culture in such a natural way and conveying so much about it by showing so little. I can definitely understand why Cuckoo's Egg was nominated for a Hugo award.

[JT · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms Cherryh do have a thing about putting humans in a minority position with Aliens. Cuckoo's Egg has a really interesting coming of age with a martial arts master story, and Serpent's reach has a really odd feel to it, but is quite enjoyable.

[Karen Ackermann]

I read and enjoyed the first novella, Cuckoo's Egg, and found it very thought-provoking. I was not able to get into the second novella and did not finish it, although it was very well-written.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

thought this had some great writing in it - especially stylistically. it was my first foray into any of cherryh's work and i enjoyed it. i think i'll read more by her pretty soon.

[Teresa Carrigan]

I liked Cuckoo's Egg, but couldn't get into Serpent's Reach.