Description:

### From Publishers Weekly A member of the peaceful, clannish, matriarchal hani race, merchant-ship captain Pyanfar Chanur would rather be left alone to earn her living. Circumstances, however, have drawn her into a vast, complicated power struggle, as the uneasy relations among several spacegoing species are enflamed by the arrival of the first humans. Armed skirmishes are rare, but hostage-taking, torture and betrayal become standard. In this amalgam of strains from current international politics (the Mideast particularly), each race harbors several factions fighting to enact their own agendas and willing to deal with their ostensible enemies to come out on top. Thus, the ambitious kif Sikkukut releases his hostages to Chanur only after she agrees to help him seize Meetpoint station. As in the previous three titles in Cherryh's series, the interesting premise of action played out against a background of volatile culture clashes devolves into a drawn-out string of inconclusive conflicts. Paperback rights to DAW. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. ### Review Furiously paced action...intricate, interesting, precarious alien politics. -- *Publishers Weekly* This book and the rest of the Chanur series...comprise one of the best science fiction tales ever. Don't miss it. -- *Minneapolis Star and Tribune*

When those aliens entities called "humans" sent their first exploration ship into Compact space, the traditional power alliances of the seven Compact races were catastrophically disrupted. And, giving shelter to Tully, the only surviving human, Pyanfar Chanur and her feline hani crew were pitched into the center of a galactic maelstrom, becoming key players in a power game which could cause an intersteller war, or bring the last hope for peace between eight barely compatible alien races.