Regenesis felt like an even stronger book than its famous predecessor, Cyteen. While still far more political than action packed, the characters develop in reaction to events, rather than over long periods of time, which makes it feel like the exciting period of Ari Jr.’s life.
The Union undergoes tremendous challenge with Resune’s special status at risk– but finally justifying itself. The cracks in the system feel realistic, with a good exploration of the damage cynical people (and groups) could do with the trust based government previously described.
Several elements of the previous book come into focus or are better explained in the context of this novel. Similarly, there’s no need to walk through a child’s upbringing or walk the “genius but still a kid” line– though Ari is quite precious as an 18 year old.
The book remains sympathetic to Justin and explains Jordan’s motivations (and misunderstandings) quite well. It’s not perfect, but it was an awfully good excuse to hop back into this interesting universe and world.
One reply on “Regenesis by C.J. Cherryh”
I did not find the book as engaging as the first book, perhaps because of the lack of sweeping perspective and grand concepts. The book WAS much tighter than it’s predecessor and because of that, you lose sight of some of the far reaching impact that Reseune had upon not only Union, but the Alliance and Earth itself.
There’s a brief nod to that reach in the initial chapters, and the history (while somewhat contradictory to the actual stories previously written) was a nice overview of the universe to-date. We saw some of that recap in the original Cyteen. But in truth, I think much of that history could have been excluded to improve the end product, or at least explained in bits throughout the story as a gradual reveal.
I understand the reason the author did it. It’s been over 20 years since she wrote Cyteen, she felt she had to explain all the history to the new group of reader (or maybe the editors felt it was necessary). Personally, I don’t think it was. An old fan is likely to know the history, a new fan would (a) probably find the history lesson boring as the start of a story and (b) would be more inclined to buy her other books to read that history if it wasn’t neatly summerized at the start of this story.
Still, I do rate it in my top 10 favorite books for all it’s flaws.