A re-read of a book first read years ago and which I must have enjoyed as I kept it; unfortunately, I'm not rating it a keeper this time around. I found the pace very slow and the main character interaction unconvincing.

Kurt Morgan is a human who crashlands on a planet where a humanoid race called the nemet live. He is from one side in a long war with another human civilisation, both in the process of destroying themselves. At first, the nemet are hostile to him, and some of them remain so, because they fought a war some generations ago against humans from the enemy side who invaded and tried to take over. The survivors of these humans are now barbarous cannibals and the nemet expect Kurt to be the same, though some of them gradually come to accept him, at least partially. The prime mover among them is K'ta, son of a ruling family of one of the two nemet cities. Despite Kurt's punching him in the face early on in an attempt to escape, K'ta bends over backwards to befriend him and treats it as a debt of honour. Unfortunately for him, this debt brings one after another in a series of disasters that befalls K'ta's family.

Meanwhile, Kurt discovers that the ruler of the city to which he has been taken is a human woman, Djan, one of the enemies he has been fighting all his adult life. They come to a wary truce and she allows K'ta's family to take Kurt in and teach him nemet ways, but later comes to regret it. Kurt falls for a nemet woman in his adoptive household and is the cause of a conflict between the ruling families and other nemet who are from a different religious heritage and who were the original rulers of the city and its surrounding lands. The ruling families came from the other nemet city overseas generations ago, so they are suspected of having divided loyalties. This underlying tension eventually leads to major conflict.

One aspect which I suppose added to the interest of the story at the time of publication is that the nemet are superficially based on the ancient Japanese: at least, they have tea ceremonies, are warriors with revered weapons, worship their ancestors and have a very controlled and non emotional social standard. Kurt struggles greatly with this and is always offending against it because he is too touchy-feely or free with his gaze.

I found the story unconvincing because I couldn't accept that the nemet would make a human woman, from a race which they regard as animalistic, into an all powerful ruler. I also found K'ta's forbearance with Kurt as excessive given the disasters that befall his family and friends due to Kurt's presence. Kurt's sentimental courtship of a nemet woman doesn't convince either when - off camera - he is also having an affair with Djan. And the latter's relationship with Kurt doesn't convince; there isn't any real connection between them, especially since she is simultaneously having an affair with a nemet from one of the underdog families. In fact the whole thing between Kurt and Djan was so low-key, I didn't realise they were meant to be having an affair until it was mentioned later by the characters. My basic problem with the book as a whole was that I didn't find any of the characters believable in their motivations and there was no real characterisation/emotional realism, as well as the slow pacing. So for me, only a 2 star rating. ( )

"Esto es una aventura de gran categoría, repleta de acción y una excelente trama. Pero es mucho más. Es una novela acerca de las maldades y las virtudes del poder, de la espiritualidad y los fines, de los prejuicios y el amor de muchas formas..."

NOPE. I couldn't get into the dry, distanced writing style, but I pushed through hoping things would start making more sense. At least, until the main character fell into insta-love with a women and then proceeded to show it by breaking all her boundaries (there was one sentence that literally says he did something against her wishes). I skipped ahead to see if there was anything to look forward to, and happened to flip to her suicide from shame at being kidnapped. NOPE.

From a 2014 review of the omnibus edition:

Brothers of Earth takes us into unknown space, with a human stranded on a planet of beings on the verge of war.

As I read, I found myself thinking, "This is like a SciFi/Fantasy version of Shogun"!

Ms. Cherryh, consider that comment as a compliment. ( )

That was the first novel that Cherryh sold but the second to be published. So when I decided to start reading all her books in order, I wondered for a bit where to start. And as the two are not relate, it ended up with starting from the one I could find first.

Meet Kurt Morgan. He is not the luckiest man in the universe - he was on a ship fighting another ship of the Hanans (both sides are human - just good old human on human war amongst the stars being led for 2 000 years - and noone remembers why anymore) when his ship manages to destroy the enemy one - but not before jumping after it to a star he had never seen and allowing one last charge of their weapon - that is coming to destroy Kurt's ship. Ship explodes, Kurt evacuates and he has not idea where he is, how to get home or if there is where to crash. Well - maybe he is lucky after all - a planet that he can breath on is just in range and he lands - with no chance to ever get back home. And he is not alone.

The planet is the home of the Nemet - a non-human (but humanoid) race living in a society that looks like the Middle Ages with honor and family being at the top of the list. There is also another human - a woman... and Hanan. To say that things do not go very well will be an understatement.

It is an old style adventure on a new planet - there are pirates (of a type) and a girl, a big adventure and a revolution, death and almost death, loss and hope. And if you come to this novel expecting that, it is a pretty good one - it is not perfect and it has the issues of the SF novels of the time - it is a boys tale in a world that looks like a boys' dream (it is kinda amusing that it was written by a woman). It has female characters - although besides Djan (the second human), all other women are subordinate and to some extent just there - the adventures happen only to the men, the decision are taken by the men (although there is always a matriarch in the family that seems to be as important as the patriarch for some things).

That novel started what will become one of the big and well known series in the world of SF - the Alliance-Union universe. Kurt and his planet are part of the Alliance - even though the tale is set way ahead in the future.

It is a fascinating world and the Nemet are an interesting race. If I was rating just the world building, it would have been 5 stars. But the story does not hold that well for an adult book - I am happy I read it but unless if you want to read the whole set of the Alliance novels, it can be skipped. ( )