Cuckoo's Egg

I absolutely love this book... I've bought it a few times, since apparently the people I've lent it to love it too. This is the first CJ Cherryh book I ever read and I've been hooked on her writing ever since.

A classic and award winner. LOVE it!

This is one of the better novels I have read in a wile. It is one of those books you are sad to finish because you will miss the charactures

I'm conflicted over rating this book. While I love her Alliance-Union universe and many of her other novels, sometimes she has a bad habit of setting up a very interesting universe or conflict only to "resolve" it far too quickly and unsatisfactorily. This is the case here.The book reads almost like a play. Or something akin to an 1-hour long episode of the Twilight Zone (season 4?). We have a brief introduction of a human baby, an infant, being cared for initially by a special kind of judge (a philosophical wandering warrior judge) in an alien society. He is older and scarred and wise. He has obvious hidden motives that we have no idea about. Then a not-too-long Act 1 is raising the infant until he's about 16. A longer Act 2 is spending time with some aliens of his age learning in "school", but that gets cut short. So the longer Act 3 has the human teenager taught by an extremely old and wise female teacher. This, too, is cut short. A short Act 4 has the young adult forced to prove his worth in the Judge Guild. Then a brief Act 5 has the BIG REVEAL about who he is and why he has been treated as he has.I truly wish this book had been LONGER. There needed to be more fleshing out of the alien culture as well as some detail on the teaching, both the demanding physical teaching (akin to an Oriental martial art) as well as the computer teaching on a variety of subjects (including a form of alien linguistics). And the conflict at the end makes no detailed sense to us, since we've been given only snippets of information about how this culture and its political and economic parts function. We understand the basics of the "why" and "how" without any sense of depth, a very surface understanding.Ultimately, the REVEAL at the very end is quite satisfying, even though the action in Act 5 happens so quickly and we know so little about the competing factions now at war over the human adult. The final paragraph sums up the purpose for why these aliens did what they did with their human charge but it screams WHAT HAPPENS NEXT into the void of time, for there is no sequel and we will never know. Did the alien plan succeed, knowing that no complex plan involving two technologically advanced species comes to fruition in the real world exactly as planned. And that is a book or short story I'd like to read. Very badly.A fun fast read that keeps you interested but always asking questions that are rarely fully answered. If you like this you many enjoy her earlier works, Brothers of Earth (1976) and Serpent's Reach (1980), and vice versa.

The world had faced a threat that it had never seen before and had never expected to come to pass. This threat was averted, but at a terrible cost to those who faced it. There was only one man that survived the encounter and the world said that it would give him whatever he asked of it. This man's name was Dunn and he did not ask for fame or for riches.Instead he asked for something that came from the vanquished enemy that had threatened the people of his world. This came in the form of a young boy named Thorn. It was Dunn's intention to raise this boy in the ways of his people and prepare him for the day that he would go forward and lead Dunn's people forward into the future that awaited them in the stars.Unfortunately Dunn underestimated how tricky humans can be....------------------This story kept me turning the pages. There is not a lot of violence or action found in this story until the end, but the interactions between the various characters are almost as good as any battle scene. The author keeps the dialogue tight and it's hard not to feel the tension as Dunn and Thorn test each other as he grows up. It's also very easy to understand how lost Thorn feels after a certain event unleashes the world on him. The only complaint I have is that I wanted to read more about these characters, but it appears this is a standalone book that was written in the beginning of the author's career but toward the end of the timeline of the universe she created. So the following books never really touch on this story line again. It's a great read though, and makes me wonder what could have happened after the last page was turned. I would recommend this to anyone that likes books that build their story around how the characters interact with each other versus how many explosions can be crammed into one book. Mac

Another great book from this author. Love the emotions in these stories and how the situations stay with you after reading. Well-paced, great characters, good ending - wish there was a follow-up.