Cyteen

Author: C.j. Cherryh

C.J. Cherryh is one of the most consistently reliable authors of convincing, richly-detailed stories of life in space. And her fiction often is about space, set aboard spaceships and space stations rather than on planets. Her work takes the form of multi-volume interlinked series, so that the Chanur novels overlap with the Merovingian Nights which overlap with the Morgaine Cycle and so on. But because the novels can be read in practically any order, Cyteen is our pick as a place to start. It's a dense novel, like so many by Cherryh, in which you find political duplicity, biological research, betrayals, wars and rumours of war, all set in a universe filled with strange, threatening planets and fascinating aliens. In this instance, the clone of a corrupt politician is raised to take her place, only to discover the convoluted plots that she is entangled in. Cyteen won both the Hugo and Locus Awards, and is a fascinating introduction to one of the most rewarding os space opera writers.