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.