Cyteen

This has been a journey! The first 200 pages are very dense and slow. You're immersed in a universe, that's evidently much larger than just the focus of this novel. And Cherryh does not hold your hand and explains - neither the politics nor the scientific innovations that run this world. There's talking and scheming, so much politics, and everyone is very careful and eternally suspicious about every single bit of communication. So, a bit of slog. But, then it gets more human, our heroine is young and you grow into the story with her. The world is exciting, as you slowly grasp it. Training with ‘tapes', the ‘azi' and their focused mind states, ‘specials' and their protected status, being able to ‘Work' others and always watching out from getting ‘Got'. And then, the last 200 pages are a pure rush, of elements coming together, and Cherryh turning up the action to 100. So you speed to the end, to discover ... OMG there's no clear ending to so many plot points!! You're mad but you're also stimulated because the story tickled your brain in just the right ways, and then you're on the way to the library on a rainy Sunday afternoon, because you discovered Cherryh wrote a sequel 20 years later!!