A review by casella
Alliance Rising by C.J. Cherryh, Jane S. Fancher

3.0

Cherryh returns to the Alliance-Union universe for the first time since 2009's Regenesis—and as Regenesis is an odd direct sequel to Cyteen (1988), it's more like 3 decades since Cherryh directly engaged with this universe. Alliance Rising is weird, in a couple ways, and I say this as someone pretty deeply Cherryh-obsessed. The writing is not so much a departure as a expansion-to-exclusion of one particular internal-expository style that Cherryh usually uses more thriftily. There's shockingly little that happens, or is even said, in this novel—lots of narrative summation, lots of quasi-stream-of-consciousness internal contemplation. Both of those are things Cherryh excels at, but they're usually balanced more with other elements. The other weird thing about this novel is where it fits in her larger future history—it slots so tightly in the timeline between other works, that an informed reader has very little imaginative wiggle room. It's hard to care too deeply about the Hinder Star stations, because we know, very clearly, what their hopes and dreams will come to, in just a few short years or decades after this novel closes. Made me reflect on prequel-peril and expanded-universe woes generally. I'm still hopeful to see what Cherryh's doing next—there were hints way back when that the Alliance-Union and Compact storylines might actually be about to merge, which would be wild, but that might be something left to the imagination.