Gate of Ivrel
C. J. Cherryh
191 pages
published in 1976

Cherryh has always been a bit hit or miss with me; some books I've devoured in one evening, others have taken me weeks to read, while some I've tried but never finished or never tried at all because they didn't seem interesting enough. On the whole I seem to like her science fiction the most, while her fantasy novels have largely disappointed. It helps that she's so frikking prolific, having written something like a zillion novels since the mid-seventies. There's always a new series or novel to try if the last one didn't satisfy. In this case, it's Gate of Ivrel, actually Cherryh's first novel, which I had had in my to read pile for years and years and finally decided to try. After having read a few monsters of books, the chance of reading a book with less than 200 pages was quite welcome. It didn't disappoint either: this was a fast, exciting read, fairly polished for a first novel, not as good as some of Cherryh's later novels of course, but good enough in its own right.

The story is either science fiction or fantasy, depending on your views, as the central premise is purely science fictional, -- a network of teleportation gates that transport you through time and space left behind by a vanished alien race which needs to be destroyed by a team of Union scientists -- but the setting is pure fantasy: a backward planet with a semi-medieval tech level, split in warring tribes and afraid of sorcery and witches. Not to mention that the population is human, but not descended from Earth.

All this is explained in a few paragraphs of italicised text before the main story starts, which also explains the legend of Morgaine. A hundred years ago four of the great princes of Andur-Kursh raised an army to free the country from the witch-lord Thiye, Lord of Ivrel of the Fires, who was threatening their lands with his sorcery, when Morgaine and her four companions appeared in the land. They made out to be enemies of Thiye as well and took command of the army raised against him, only to lead it to its doom, with Morgaine the only survivor. She was hunted down, but disappeared in one of the witch gates, where she is trapped still...

The story proper begins with Nhi Vanye ep Morija, a bastard son of the ruler of the clan of Nhi, who has grown up being bulied by his half brothers, the true heirs to his father's reign, and who accidentally kills one of them, and so is outcast as a roaming warrior, an ilin. Vanye flees, is hunted by his former friends and driven into the cursed mountains, until he stumbles over the gate that's said to contain Morgaine's restless spirit --and of course, he wakes her up. Morgaine takes him in her service and now he's not just a honourless outlaw, but a honourless outlaw in service to the most hated and feared woman in the world, bound to her until she has achieved her goal of destroying the witch gate of Ivrel...

If there's one thing that binds most, if not all C. J. Cherryh novels together, whether they're fantasy or science fiction, it's who she chooses for her protagonists. They're young, usually male, confused, put in stressfull, dangerous situations for reasons not of their chosing, usually constricted by bounds of honour or family obligations to act in a certain way even though they know it's against there own self interested or even survival. Cherryh has an almost sadistic pleasure to put her protagonists in situations they cannot hope to master and see what happens. It's interesting to see these traits already well established in her first novel.

Another Cherryh trait that turns out to have been early established is her narration. Some writers make sure you never miss important plot developments, but Cherryh goes out of her way to make you work hard to follow the plot. Important developments occur offstage or are only mentioned in passing. Characters are introduced with little clue as to their importance and hints may be dropped on page seventeen without which you won't be able to understand the significance of what happens in chapter ten. Again, this is already used here. I had to reread a few times to realise what actually was happening in some places.

Also, I knew that Cherryh had tied a lot of her otherwise unrelated science fiction and fantasy novels together by writing new introductions for them putting them in her Union-Alliance universe, but I didn't realise that she was already doing that with her first novel. I got the first printing of Gate of Ivrel and the italicised introduction talks about Union scientists and the Union Science Bureau, long before any of the Union-Alliance books proper had been written...

In all, if you like Cherryh, this is another of her books you will enjoy; if you do not, you can avoid this one as well, as it is so typically Cherryh. If you haven;t tried any of her novels yet, this is a good place to start, as it doesn't have any of the typical first novel flaws, has got everything that's typical of Cherryh's writing, is short and a damn good read on its own.

Read more about:
C. J. Cherryh, Gate of Ivrel, fantasy, book review