Gate of Ivrel Review
CJ Cherryh’s first book, Gate of Ivrel is a stunning debut that shows the kind of wild talent and unique voice Cherryh would develop over the next several decades. Published in 1976 by the equally-legendary DAW, Gate of Ivrel is a fascinating blend of science fiction and fantasy, featuring an alien named Morgaine tasked with closing Gates. These enable travel across space and time, and a set have ended up on an anarchistic planet where otherwise hearths represent bleeding-edge technology. This initial outing is more fantasy than science fiction, but perhaps it can best be classified as a road trip story.
Vanye is a Cha Nhi, a mixed race member of the two tribes, an illegitimate son born from the Nhi King Rijan and a random Cha woman who died giving birth to him. His father takes pity on him and allows him to stay at his palace. But Vanye’s two half-brothers, legitimate heirs to the throne, hate him due to a twisted mix of racism and royal fear. Vanye was able to prove himself over the years, and earned a coveted role of a warrior. Jealous, his brothers ambush him one day while training, ending in tragedy as Vanye kills one brother and maims the other. Despite it being in self-defense, he is cast out of the kingdom, and made an ilin. This is all but a death sentence, as hostile nations surround the lands of Nhi.
Still, being a great warrior and adept at stealth, Vayne survived in the wilds for two years, until his enemies finally found him. Hunted, he runs into the woods but gets lost. While trying to find his way, he discovers one of the Gates that dot the world, and somehow activates it. Out comes a strange looking woman with a powerful sword that emits a deadly beam of light. She brings Vanye to a cave for shelter from the oncoming snow storm, and shares her food and wine.
This wasn’t entirely an act of charity. As part of Nhi tradition, an ilin who takes food and shelter from somebody can be Claimed, that is made a slave of that person for a year. She takes advantage of this, telling Vanye that her name is Morgaine and she intends to kill Thiye Thiye’s-son, a cruel man who controls the whole planet, and shut down the Gate that grants him immortality. While we don’t get her full story in this first novel, we do learn that she fled into the Gate on the run from Thiye’s army after a failed attack by her and her men. To Morgaine, her time in the Gate was mere minutes, but in reality over a hundred years had passed. Reluctantly, being a man of honor and tradition, Vanye agrees to follow her on this quest.
I can’t help but think of The Paradox Paradox which I recently reviewed. Like Gate of Ivrel, it was the first book by its author. Yet in a fraction of the page count (502 vs 190), Cherryh crafted a deeper and more engrossing world, a more interesting cast of richer and better developed characters, and a plot that makes sense despite not yet knowing much of Morgaine’s backstory.
The prose is also on a higher level. It's written in this strange, almost ye olden English style, illustrating how old-fashioned this planet is. It uses a lot of old words and phrases, a very circular and guarded way of speaking, ballasted by flowery language. It can be a bit much in places, and there are times where the story feels like its repeating itself with both text and general themes, but overall it’s an enjoyable and unique writing style. It certainly stands out against modern books, packed with snarky characters and bland prose.
Indeed, this is rather a grim book. There are no laughs to be had, and death lurks around every corner. We accompany Morgaine and Vanye on their trip across most of the world. Most of their time is spent on the road, Morgaine and Vanye don’t stay in any one place for more than ten or fifteen pages. The way the book describes their journey is perfect, you feel the toll this massive trip took on their bodies, and on their horses. Constantly having to stop to tend to those horses, setting up camp every night, discussions of who takes watch and when, who needs immediate first aid and who can go without for a short time, needing to warm by a fire, needing to find food. By the end Vanye’s body is in tatters, less from combat and more from the fact that he’s either ridden a horse or ran almost nonstop for weeks.
The story is told entirely from Vanye’s perspective, an interesting choice and one that pays off. Through him we’re able to learn the customs and cultures of this world while also seeing Morgaine as the outsider that she is. Her way of speaking, her mannerisms, and her general demeanor is different than that of everyone else. She was there for a while a hundred years before her accidental exile, so she’s aware of the customs and even meets with descendants of the men she employed way back when. The book does a great job of making it clear she is not of this world, without being overtly obvious or beating that point into the ground.
Vanye is an excellent protagonist. He’s not the Terminator-type (or should I say Conan-type?), wrecking every enemy in his path without a care in the world or breaking a sweat. There’s very little combat in the first three-quarters of the book, and when he does fight he does it unwillingly, only when he’s attacked first, and tries not to kill. The rarer times still when he does kill, he’s eaten up by it. He’s also one of contradictions. He’s a great warrior, but he admits to being a coward, constantly second-guessing why he’s following Morgaine and how he’s afraid of her. He’s afraid of being alone, and he loathes the fact that he has to fight his own kin along this journey.
Morgaine, for her part, is harder to get a read on. We never see her perspective, she’s filtered entirely through Vanye’s lens. She’s a great warrior, more willing to kill than he is, but would still prefer not to. She feels guilt from the loss of her previous army but won’t say so openly. She misses her world, but again, rarely expresses these feelings. She’s guarded with everyone she encounters, only rarely opening up to Vanye. But she’s also realistic, herself questioning why he’s so blindly loyal to her, even holding a blade to his throat after he narrowly escapes imprisonment and fighting a grueling battle just to reunite with her.
What I love about their dynamic so much is the total lack of romance. This isn’t a story where the two fall in love and the power of that love overcomes all enemies! Their relationship is much deeper and more fulfilling than that. They’re both lonely, both have done terrible things, and find kinship in each other. This could have easily turned into a generic romance fantasy in any other writers hands, but Cherryh has the emotional intelligence to not immediately put the two in bed together, while not making them best friends either.
If I have one complaint, it’s that the list of their enemies is comically long. At one point literally every tribe on the planet is chasing them. Yet they rarely feel like a threat. Morgaine may not be an unstoppable warrior, but her sword is, shooting out a beam of light that kills anyone in front of it in the blink of an eye. The story frequently has to take it away from them to even the odds.
The book also talks up the evils of Thiye, but we never see it. We see local leaders, and they’re often terrible, but we never see the true evils of Thiye himself. I guess that’s three complaints, huh? Luckily there are two other antagonists that carry the slack, one of whom, Vanye’s surviving brother, might be the most interesting in the whole book. These two feel like a real threat, and when you learn what one of them is up to, you understand why Vanye is so afraid.
Those are minor complaints compared to what this book does so well. It has a great story, and it tells it exceptionally well. That may sound silly, that’s the point of a book, right? But when I think of so many books that either had good stories but were badly written, or just had bad stories to begin with, this feels like a rarity. Despite being the first in a tetralogy, Gate of Ivrel feels like a standalone book with well-defined characters, an excellent world, a slow buildup to an action packed conclusion, and a fun journey along the way.
If this is CJ Cherryh’s first book, I cannot wait to read more.
