Arctic Light

Thank you to everyone who weighed in on the pen name poll! I'm still personally dithering between Mar Delaney and Elisa Kerr, leaning towards Mar, but I'm not going to rush into it and I appreciate the arguments everyone offered for and against. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. :D

On a different topic, I've been talking about CJ Cherryh on Tumblr as well as here, and talked a few people over there into reading The Pride of Chanur, and thus Tumblr Book Club was born. If you want to discuss a Cherryh book, read this one so you can talk about it with us! I'll make a post here as well as on Tumblr, probably in a week or so. It's only $2.99 on Kindle and also available on Audible.

Roughly paraphrasing how I described it on Tumblr, this book - the first of a series, but can be read as a standalone - is about a ship full of alien lion-women Amazons who semi-kidnap, semi-adopt an escaped human prisoner (the first and only human any of them have ever seen). The society of the hani is based on lions - males are nominally in charge, but are considered (due to gender stereotyping/socializing as much as reality, IIRC) too unstable and violent to interact with outsiders, so women do all the work of trading, war, etc., and hani merchant spaceships are crewed entirely by women. Swaggering, macho, piratical women - if you've read Digger, there is a certain similarity to Ursula Vernon's hyena-warriors.

I've started reading the first couple of chapters, and it's just as much fun as I remember. I think this one is a pretty good introduction to her books, particularly if you like alien worldbuilding, tough women, and hapless woobie-type dudes getting tied up/beat up a lot.

(This does mean that I'm still only halfway through Cloud's Rider, however. So many books, so little time ...)