Chanur's Legacy

Hiffy Chanur, once a member of her aunt's crew on The Pride of Chanur, is now captain of her own vessel, Chanur's Legacy. It should have been the ideal existence for Hiffy, her fondest dream fulfilled, but instead the young captain's increasingly hard-pressed to take care of her ship's business. So when Meetpoint's stationmaster offers her a million credits to transport a small, mysterious, "religious" object it seems like a golden opportunity�perhaps even too good an opportunity.... Yet despite her misgivings, Hiffy feels it's a comission she can't turn down. But soon she and the Legacy are caught in an ever-tightening web of intrigue. And only time will tell whether the young captain can determine who is her ally and who is her enemy in this deadly game of interstellar politics... From Publishers Weekly This is the fifth entry in Cherryh's ( Heavy Time ) chronicles of the Chanur clan, space-faring members of a cat-like alien race called the hani.not capitalized It picks up 10 years after the action of Chanur's Homecoming , and introduces an almost entirely new cast of characters. The fast-moving story centers on Hilfy Chanur's efforts to fulfill a contract involving the delivery of a religious artifact. This seemingly straightforward assignment quickly escalates in typical Cherryh fashion into a tangle of financial and political intrigue involving five different alien species, half a dozen planets, and more paperwork than either the reader or the characters can keep track of. Despite the apparent confusion, it is a great deal of fun. There is more humor here than in previous Chanur books, stemming primarily from the foibles of various well-developed alien cultures. Cherryh demonstrates a remarkable grasp of alien psychologies--she has mastered the near-impossible trick of creating aliens who think differently from, but just as well as, humans. Very few SF writers could carry off a 400-page novel with no major human characters; Cherryh does so effortlessly. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Hilfy Chanur, young captain of the merchant ship Chanur's Legacy , accepts a commission from a dignitary on the planet Meetpoint to deliver a religious artifact to nearby Urtur Station. The arrangement soon becomes a tangle of interstellar intrigue as Hilfy and her crew battle kidnappers, assassins, and smooth politicians while fighting their own inborn prejudices. Set in the Alliance-Union universe, a favorite Cherryh sf setting, the fifth book in her ongoing chronicle of the spacefaring, feline Chanur clan should appeal to fans of fast-moving, meticulously detailed space opera. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.