The Morgaine Saga

Some of the most fascinating worldbuilding I've encountered. Bleak, human, liminal. Unputdownable. Exactly what I needed.

Gates of Ivrel makes clear at the start that this is a fantasy world by way of post-post-apocalypse scifi. Long ago, a race called the qhal built a galactic empire by utilizing “gates”, technology which permitted instantaneous travel over distance and time. As is often the case, the qhal messed around with time too much and accidentally obliterated themselves in the process.

However, the gates still remain. It's never outright stated, but it seems enough time has passed that each world has developed its own post-qhal culture, with qhalian artifacts forgotten and shunned. You can see snippets of the qhal's influence in the language and history of the world (the specfic world in this book is called Andur-Kursh), but these descendants are strictly separate from them.

The danger of the gates - through malicious purpose, accident, or malfunction of the machinery itself - prompted the need for an organization (their origins never made clear) to send agents out to close the gates across the worlds.

The titular Morgaine is one such agent tasked with closing these gates. Who or what she is is not made clear in this book, and while her goal will ultimately help the world by closing the gates, that is of distant benefit to her. She is both an alien and legendary figure, treated more like a demon than a human. There's a mutual distance, distrust and fear between her and the inhabitants of the land.

Our protagonist, Vayne, is one such inhabitant. He is a royal bastard who is exiled at the start of the book and eventually becomes Morgaine's companion and servant via coincidence and fairly intricate contract law.

His story and character arc at first seem predictable: a skilled bastard who is ill-treated and eventually exiled when he becomes too much of an inconvenience, only to be swept up in a grand adventure where he's able to flourish and become the hero he was always meant to be.

But that is not Vayne. As the layers of the onion are peeled back, Vayne is revealed to be a sad and even pathetic character. He is a self-admitted coward, fearing death above all else, and apart from his code of honor he has little to call his own. He is loyal to Morgaine, for that is his greatest strength, but he is as often a burden and liability to her quest as an asset.

These wrinkles make Vayne into an extremely interesting character, particularly when contrasted against the stoic and driven Morgaine, who has weaknesses and a certain type of cowardice of her own. Exploring how their relationship evolves is one of the core threads throughout the book.

My greatest enjoyment came from the many character dynamics at play in Gates of Ivrel. Supporting characters might start as an ally only to turn foe and then back again depending on the situation. Andur-Kursh is politically complicated, and Morgaine herself is treated like a force of nature that can be coaxed in certain advantageous directions by opportunistic schemes.

Both Vayne and Morgaine are hanging by a thread for almost the entire book, just barely outrunning one plot only to stumble immediately into the next one. It makes for exciting writing, but at its worst it comes across like a Saturday morning cartoon where villains pop up with almost comical timing.

It's a quick read, but it would have been stronger for having a number of slower sections to give the plot a breather and to help convey the great distances being travelled. As it stands, the land of Andur-Kursh feels small, as characters are able to travel too quickly and set up confrontations and ambushes in ways that feel at odds with the geography she describes.

As far as genre goes, it's interesting to read a book in which the reader knows it's scifi but is treated in-world as a fantasy. You can intuit what the gates are and how the technology Morgaine wields works, but everything is strictly through the lens of Vayne who does not understand any of it. He'll describe events using his understanding and language, and all of a sudden it'll click what he's actually experiencing from “our” perspective. These are very satisfying moments in the book, so I won't spoil them here.

I know nothing of the Morgaine Cycle or Cherryh herself when I started this book, but I've quickly become a fan and I plan to read the next book (Well of Shiuan) in short order.