I’m glad I read other reviews before I wrote mine. It seems that my problem with this book is my age and attitude toward the efforts necessary to learn the 3 alien languages that color the story. The plot is intriguing enough: super-mature(?) and -powerful aliens are fighting an internecine war because of a cultural faux pas by the “bad” guy. The bad guy must die…no matter who (or what) gets in the way. The humans manage to not get squished because they’re so “cute”? or ignorant or stupid…or something; and, after a lot of “collateral damage” things work out in the end. And a particular planet isn’t obliterated.

My problem seems to be my unwillingness to expend the effort to memorize the multitudinous alien words for their emotions and cultural (and inter-species) relationships—and then multiply that by the 3 alien species. I admit that the plot is bizarre enough to be interesting; and that Cherryh is a good enough writer—at least enough to keep me reading to the end, in spite of my reluctance to finish it, much less learn 3 alien languages.

With that said my 2.5 star rating should be seen as a quirk of my current state-of-mind, not necessarily a problem of the book. Please do not use me as measure of whether you should or should not read ‘Hunter of Worlds’. But rather as someone to forgive for lacking a true appreciation; or someone with whom you can sympathize for possessing a particular sensitivity. ( )

A solid (if rather dated) book, Hunter shares a lot of themes with the Chanur novels, though those seem much more polished: isolation, loyalty, identity, and the strangely prominent spectre of interspecies sex. Cherryh as usual has excellent aliens, though her liberal use of alien _terminology_ is a double-edged sword; it makes plain the differences among their patterns of thought and culture, but the reader has to pick up most of them from context (there is a glossary at the back, though), and their density can be sort of overwhelming.

I found the plot of this one a bit difficult. The central conflict has to do with events among the ruling aliens (iduve). There's a big chunk of explanatory backstory at point, but the causes are all in the past and hence rather abstract. The protagonists are only involved because the rulers want some tools; two of the three have no personal stake in the matter, except for being enslaved, and other than hoping for their survival, there's really no one to root for.

These problems in defining the conflict carried through a resolution I found unsatisfying. The characters don't get much of a development arc beyond acceptance of their situation. I get the feeling that we are supposed to feel sympathetic for the iduve at the end, but... these are people willing to destroy a planet to get one guy over an obscure-to-humans matter of saving face. I think I'd rather drink with a kif. ( )

And for the first time in my read through of Cherryh's novels, here is a real SF novel, with no fantasy hiding behind the scenes. It is her 3rd novel and second in her long running Alliance-Union Universe although it can as well be considered a separate and non-related one - maybe a later novel will tie the lines together but it has no connection at all to the first one.

Somewhere across the stars, humanity had moved away from a whole system, leaving it to the locals - the kallia and the amaut and the iduve). There are some humans remaining and they do not fare very well - the amaut use them as slaves and everyone more or less despises them. Enter the iduve - a secretive race that lives on its ships and controls any race that they come into contact with, taking them as something similar enough to slaves - both the kallia and the amaut are taken into the ships and bred there - the kallia for servants, the amaut for soldiers. The iduve had been away for a bit and now they are back and they seem to be here to stay. A family matter makes one of the most powerful of them, Chimele, go for something unheard of - join together different races.

The iduve have a technology, that allows different people to be joined mentally in a way that makes them feel the same as the others - memories, feelings, fairs. And usually it is done with members of the same species. Chimele joins 3 of them - a human, Daniel, a planet born kallia, Aiela, and a slave-born female kallia, Isande. Half the novel is taken by the story of that joining and them getting used to it; the other one is resolving the family matter (which almost causes the destruction of a planet).

It is a novel about the different - everyone is forced to live in a world that is not their own, amongst people that are not their own. Cherryh builds 3 complete races and make them believable - with their languages and psychologies and their social norms. Her world building is as good as ever and this novel makes me look forward to her next novels even more. ( )

Romanzo di formazione in cui si narra la storia di un clan dei signori delle stelle, un popolo evoluto ma freddo e vendicativo, che vive in grandissime astronavi continuamente in giro per la galassia, che ricerca per una vendetta uno dei suoi membri fuggito anni prima.
In realtà la trama è del tutto insignificante e serve “solo” alla Cherryh per cimentarsi in un excursus psicologico-comportamentale-sociale tra e dei personaggi.
Non mi è piaciuto, francamente: astruso, ingarbugliato ed insulso. Ma nonostante ciò si intuisce la bravura della Cherryh che, infatti, mi ha "permesso" di concludere la lettura... ( )

What I liked best about this book was the notion of meeting alien civilizations. And in this case-- What if they are so powerful that they just don't Care what you think? In most novels, Humans are the ascendant power in the galaxy. This story, we are the weak johnny-come-latelys who don't know how to stay out of the way ( )