{"id":34759,"date":"2026-01-13T13:17:29","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T19:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=34759"},"modified":"2026-01-12T18:18:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T00:18:24","slug":"book-report-the-pride-of-chanur-by-c-j-cherryh-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/13\/book-report-the-pride-of-chanur-by-c-j-cherryh-1981\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>The Pride of Chanur<\/i> by C.J. Cherryh (1981)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/theprideofchanur.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">This book is a two-fer in the <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/20\/a-look-ahead\/\" target=\"_new\">2026 Winter Reading Challenge<\/a>; it would fit into the <em>Science Fiction\/Fact<\/em> category, but I&#8217;m putting it into the <em>Nonhuman Character<\/em> category.  Looking at the list, many of the categories whisper to me books that would also fit into the <em>Science Fiction\/Fact<\/em> category as well.  So I will probably listen to that whisper to get my two-fers.<\/p>\n<p>And I must confess, gentle reader: I read this book about forty years ago.  And my first exposure to it was from a song.  You see, at some point in middle school or high school, I ordered an inexpensive cassette called <em>Quarks and Quests<\/em> from the back of a science fiction magazine.  It was a &#8220;filk&#8221; (science fiction and fantasy folk music) collection which included &#8220;The Pride of Chanur&#8221; by Leslie Fish:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1nUi3DaWzGI?si=k1wjwYBPv3US8ww0\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I spotted it in a library at some point thereafter&#8211;I remember it was in the original DAW paperback but with the library binding (basically, a hardback with the paperback inside and the paperback cover pasted on the outside).  I picked up this volume in a book club edition in <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/02\/good-book-hunting-september-1-2007\/\" target=\"_new\">2007<\/a> (the same day I bought <em><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/12\/book-report-after-worlds-collide-by-philip-wylie-edwin-balmer-1934-1973\/\" target=\"_new\">After Worlds Collide<\/a><\/em>, the sequel to a book I read in sixth grade and the follow-up recently, in 2024), so it&#8217;s a hardback with the paperback front cover on the front dustjacket.  Weird.<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, the book starts out on a trading station where the crew of a cat-like race called the <em>hani<\/em> are loading cargo when a nearly naked and bleeding creature that is keeping to the shadows bolts onto the ship.  Spoiler alert: It&#8217;s an unknown-to-them species, but it&#8217;s human, and the <em>kif<\/em>, a race of raiders and pirates, want it back so they can torture it to reveal its homeworld so they can <strike>raid<\/strike> <em>trade with<\/em> it (::wink::).  The <em>hani<\/em>em> on the ship, the <em>Pride of Chanur<\/em>, decide not to give the human up, so it turns into a bit of an interstellar war.  Kind of like the song says.<\/p>\n<p>So the book has a bunch of <strike>world-<\/strike> galaxy-building, detailing the internal politics of the clans of the <em>hani<\/em> and the relationships between the races.  It alludes to the technologies the different species use, but it doesn&#8217;t go into excruciating detail.  It has but a few set pieces&#8211;fleeing, hiding at the edges of a system, and so on, and then it culminates in a trip to the <em>hani<\/em> home world to handle some intrigue and a rush back to orbit for an epic space battle handled with a bit of a &#8220;Wait, what?&#8221; <em>deus ex machina<\/em> climax followed by a long d\u00e9nouement.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, the book spawned four additional books over the next decade <em>and<\/em> are part of the same universe as Cherryh&#8217;s Downbelow books, of which I read <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/30\/book-report-merchanters-luck-rendezvous-at-downbelow-station-by-c-j-cherryh-1982\/\" target=\"_new\"><em>Merchanter&#8217;s Luck<\/em><\/a> for the Winter Reading Challenge in 2023.  So it looks like <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/11\/book-report-death-in-dittmer-by-james-r-wilder-2023\/\" target=\"_new\">James<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/12\/book-report-killing-at-cottage-farm-by-james-r-wilder-2025\/\" target=\"_new\">Wilder<\/a> is not the only author to make a repeat appearance on the forms.  Some librarian or librarians will think I don&#8217;t read widely at all.<\/p>\n<p>Also, forty years later, I still pronounce the name <em>cherry-h<\/em> although I am sure that I have read her <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/C._J._Cherryh\" target=\"_new\">Wikipedia entry before<\/a> (likely in 2023), so maybe someday I will remember it&#8217;s pronounced just <em>Cherry<\/em> because that is her real last name&#8211;the h was added to make it look less like a romance author&#8217;s name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This book is a two-fer in the 2026 Winter Reading Challenge; it would fit into the Science Fiction\/Fact category, but I&#8217;m putting it into the Nonhuman Character category. Looking at the list, many of the categories whisper to me books that would also fit into the Science Fiction\/Fact category as well. So I will probably [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34760,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34759\/revisions\/34760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}