The Pride of Chanur

I found this book, the first of four in the series, to be fascinating in its portrayal of a race of intelligent, upright-walking lions. Cherryh’s ability to invent believable and fully fleshed-out alien races is delightful.

In this series, humans are the aliens. I loved how Cherryh made the reader root for the lions and their strange but understandable culture. It's a great concept by a great writer.

CJ Cherryh is a master at delving into the psychology and societies of her characters and making the reader feel what they feel.

The Chanur books, starting with this book, are a standout example of alien fiction because they’re told almost exclusively from the point of view of Captain Pyanfar Chanur, a cat-like member of the Hani. She’s smart and tough, which is what you need to be when hauling freight through Compact Space, home to seven very different alien species.

Caught in deadly political intrigue, Pyanfar is forced to figure out what the aliens opposing her are thinking and… show more.

In The Pride of Chanur, a human prisoner escapes from the alien kif, who are interrogating him and who have killed his shipmates. The human stows away aboard a hani merchant vessel (the hani are non-human sentients; think large humanoid cats); when discovered, he talked the ship’s captain into making him part of the (otherwise female and hani) crew. The kif attempt to bully the hani into giving up their human crewmate, but they refuse and retreat, until the kif are overextended and have to return home. This is a psychologically rich and entertaining novel that is about spaceships,… show more.