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So I've been looking at Cherryh's books in stores for a long time, (wondering how to pronounce her last name and) being not quite tempted enough to buy one, since they seemed to be mostly arranged into sequences, and it'd mean figuring out which one to read first.
"Chanur's Legacy" turned up in (I think it was) the Used Book Exchange Rack at work, so the price was right. I convinced myself from reading the back cover that it would probably be comprehensible read by itself, so I did. It's a good book, set in a galaxy where a handful of different species interact, merchant starships make regular runs between systems, there are tensions and diplomacies and rivalries and wars, and so on. The emphasis is on character and plot rather than technology.
The alien races are interesting and well designed (in fact there's not a single human in the book, aside for one that appears in a character's memories). The themes are about personal and social development: tradition and change and gender roles, the nature of leadership, and all like that. You've got your lion-like race pulled suddenly into the galactic culture, trying to reconcile its pride-based social structures with the very different requirements of interstellar trade. You've got your menacing dark-robed race of purely self-interested predators who aren't necessarily as evil as they look. You've got your big annoyingly-accented race of devious traders, and you've got your delicate race of wealthy aesthetes with three or four genders, whose language is all about politeness and indirection, and who can change gender or even entire identity under the right (or wrong) stresses. The characters are well-developed, and they develop in plausible and pleasing ways.
So it's an interesting and well designed setting, and the story in this particular book is involving and fun. My one complaint is that it ends in a heck of a hurry. In the last 25 pages of a 415-page book we go from the good guys being in a very messy piece of trouble to everything being all resolved and the good guys having won, and it happens so fast that I was both confused and not entirely convinced. There seem to be two stratagems and one minor deus ex involved, but I didn't (and don't) really understand how they led to the problems all being solved.
It could be because I haven't read any of the previous books in the series. "Chanur's Legacy" isn't a direct sequel to "Chanur's Pride" or the other previous books; where there are tie-ins and important background material in those books the important stuff is explained again in this one. But it may be that if I were more familiar with the races and the background story from those books, the ending of this one would have made more sense to me; dunno.
I'm now even more tempted to read "Chanur's Pride" and them; the main character in "Chanur's Legacy" apparently does appear in some role in them (and it'd be interesting to see her younger self), and the main character in "Chanur's Pride" appears in "Chanur's Legacy" as an absent influence, and a by no means entirely positive memory (and it'd be interesting to see the universe from her point of view, having seen it from an at least somewhat opposing one).
So sure, read this book, before or after the other ones. Maybe the ending will make more sense to you than it did to me; I could just be slow.
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