Gate of Ivrel is my second venture into C.J. Cherryh’s work, following Pride of Chanur a few years ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. it unfortunately probably will be some time before I’m able to continue with the Morgaine Cycle, but I’m very much looking forward to some of the other Cherryh books I own in the meantime.
Gate of Ivrel follows Nhi Vanye, a young warrior exiled from his “clan” for kin-slaying — the accidental killing of one of his half-brothers and injuring of the other. this leaves Vanye without status, as an ilin (clearly modeled on a certain romantic conception of feudal Japanese rōnin — more on this later), and on top of this he is pursued both by his father, the head of the Nhi, and more pressingly by the Myya, cousins of his half-brother’s mother, whose land lies between his home and other places where he might be safe. one fateful night, he meets Morgaine, a half-mythical woman out of the past, on a deadly mission to destroy the villainous Hjemur lord Thiye (from Vanye’s perspective) and the spacetime gate at Ivrel, from which Thiye derives his power (from Morgaine’s perspective). she is able to legally bind Vanye to her service, and the two of them set off relentlessly — though through many, many political obstacles — towards Ivrel.
now, the big downside here is the extent to which the novel is embedded in both Orientalism and Celticism: its conception of “clans” is very clearly a direct transposition of colonial stereotypes about Gaelic Scotland and Ireland combined with an Orientalist image of feudal Japan. the people of Vanye’s world are obsessed with honor, for the “clan” and for the individual. members of the aristocracy (but not ilin) are entitled to carry “honor blades” in addition to their primary weapons. Vanye’s cousin is a harper, of course. names in this region are surname/clan name first, given name second (thus Nhi Vanye of the Nhi, Chya Roh of the Chya, etc.). thinking about this alongside other work from this period — especially Elizabeth A. Lynn’s Ryoka stories and parts of the Chronicles of Tornor — had me wondering if a specific Japanese cultural artifact entered American popular consciousness in this period, and I suspect the answer may be the 1974 English translation of Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings (五輪書), a classic (but idiosyncratic) treatise on swordsmanship and martial philosophy.
in spite of this, it’s a really engaging book. the language is a particular highlight, both its mildly archaic stylization (somewhere between Earthsea and the Riddle-Master trilogy) and especially the fact that Morgaine uses, of all things, Quaker plain speech, which is to say that while she sometimes forces herself to use “you” her default second person singular pronoun is “thee”, paired with third-person singular verb forms. I unironically love this, first, because “thou” is good, actually, and we shouldn’t be afraid to use it just because some people are bad at it; second, because plain-speaking forms are an elegant compromise that makes it easy to avoid the ungrammatical forms that result from people who aren’t sure how to use “thou” correctly; and, third, because it implies that Morgaine is a fairly (theologically) conservative Quaker, which I love for her. I’m all in on Quaker Morgaine now.
structurally, Cherryh does a great job ensuring that the repeated political obstacles (mainly the various clan lords Morgaine and Vanye encounter) do not, in fact, feel repetitive: Morgaine’s obsessive focus on getting to Ivrel combined with Vanye’s devotion to his oath — as the locus of the only real honor that remains to him — keep the book moving even when they are literally or figuratively stationary.
in terms of overall narrative, as I mentioned on Bluesky the other day, I love stories about a member of an institution designed to stand the test of time in face of some future crisis who is aware that their institution has declined severely, to the point that it will not be able to adequately meet that crisis. Morgaine is not precisely that — she is, rather, the sole survivor of a much larger team tasked with closing all of the spacetime gates scattered throughout the — galaxy? universe? (I expect I’ll find out more in future books.) but she cannot give up; all she can do is continue, potentially forever, in hopes that her task isn’t futile:
That is my task, to seal Gates. I shall go until there are no more—and I shall not know that, I fear, until I step out of the last one and find nothing there.
I’m obsessed with this!!! especially paired with Vanye’s devotion to his oath, this novel is a fascinating exploration of duty, loyalty, and what it means to place one’s purpose ahead of one’s own life. highly recommend.
(back: main page · reviews by author · reviews by country · other reviews from the USA)