8 /10 1 Votes8
Country United States Publication date January 2009 Pages 592 pp Originally published January 2009 OCLC 233548909 | 4/5 Goodreads Language English Media type Print (Hardback) ISBN 0-7564-0530-0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Genres Novel, Science Fiction, Speculative fiction Similar C J Cherryh books, Union-Alliance books, Science Fiction books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Regenesis (2009) is a science fiction novel by American science fiction and fantasy author C. J. Cherryh set in her Alliance-Union universe. It is a sequel to Cherryh's 1988 Hugo award-winning science fiction novel, Cyteen, and was published in hardcover by DAW Books in January 2009. The teenage clone of a top scientist and political leader unravels the decades-old murder of her "genemother", while also dealing with threats to her own welfare.
Contents
Plot summary
Ariane Emory is the eighteen-year-old clone of an extraordinary woman who was both a preeminent research scientist and the leader of the Expansionist Party, which has controlled Union since its inception. Her predecessor had some very powerful friends and enemies. However, inasmuch as her genemother had died under suspicious circumstances before she was even born, Emory is unsure who they are.
She is not without resources though. A breakthrough experiment in "psychogenesis" has recreated in her the genius of her parent. Everyone knows that she will one day follow in her mother's footsteps and take charge of Reseune, a sovereign Administrative Territory and the premier azi research facility in Union, one of the three spacefaring factions of humanity.
In the meantime, she takes measures to protect herself, assembling a trusted staff with the assistance of her azi bodyguards and companions, Florian and Catlin. When she discovers that her new azi security chief has been tampered with, her list of possible enemies grows to include key men inside Reseune itself: Yanni Schwartz, the Director, and Adam Hicks, the head of security. Adding to the discord is the return of a bitter Jordan Warrick from a twenty-year exile at an isolated research facility. He had been pressured into confessing to killing the original Emory.
The murder of Dr. Sandur Patil, a top scientist recruited by Schwartz to head up the terraforming of Eversnow, turns out to be but one step in a plot by Emory's unknown enemy that shakes Union to its core. As she struggles to deal with the escalating situation, she also unravels the decades-old mystery of her genemother's death.
Characters
Reception
In his Sci Fi Wire review, Paul Di Filippo complained that the "forward movement of the story is slow and halting". Nader Elhefnawy wrote in Strange Horizons that while Regenesis creates "a better sense of the fictional world" than Cyteen, he felt that it adds little to the concepts introduced in its predecessor. Elhefnawy added that he "had little feeling that something fundamental had been decided, a turning point passed in the evolution of either the book's main character, or the larger drama of her world and her civilization".