Set about a generation after the events in DOWNBELOW STATION, this novel features just a much intrigue, but focuses on the Union world of Cyteen, and specifically its cloning labs. While well written, this is exactly the sort of CJ Cherryh novel that I dislike, where much of the story involves characters suffering intense psychological stress over traumatic and what (at least appear to be) no-win situations.

She works constantly, researches mostly on the internet, and has books stacked up and waiting to be written. A loom is gathering dust and needs rethreading, a wooden ship model awaits construction, and the cats demand their own time much more urgently. Her studies include planetary geology, weather systems, and natural and man-made catastrophes, civilizations, and cosmology…in fact, there's very little that doesn't interest her. She has written science fiction since she was ten, spent ten years of her life teaching Latin and Ancient History on the high school level, before retiring to full time writing, and now does not have enough hours in the day to pursue all her interests. She sketches, occasionally, cooks fairly well, and hates house work she loves the outdoors, animals wild and tame, is a hobbyist geologist, adores dinosaurs, and has academic specialties in Roman constitutional law and bronze age Greek ethnography. She began with the modest ambition to learn to skate backwards and now is working on jumps. Her hobbies include travel, photography, reef culture, Mariners baseball, and, a late passion, figure skating: she intends to compete in the adult USFSA track. She is the author of more than forty novels. Cherryh has won four Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. Currently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J.

Cyteen series