The novel “Chanur’s Venture” by C.J. Cherryh was published for the first time in 1984. It’s the second novel of the Chanur series and follows “The Pride of Chanur“.

Worries for Pyanfar Chanur come especially from her husband Khym after he started traveling on the merchant ship “The Pride of Chanur”. No hani male had ever traveled in space together with females and for Khym anything new could be a possible cause of emotional instability.

When Pyanfar Chanur goes back to Meetpoint station for what looks like a normal commercial tour, everything changes when he meets the human Tully again while he’s on a secret mission to start trade relations with other species of the Compact. It’s a huge opportunity for all hani but the kif are still there and there’s a internal power struggle between two hakkikt that makes the situation even more complex and above all dangerous.

The Chanur series belongs to the fictional universe created by C.J. Cherryh called the Universe of the Alliance-Union universe in which many stories written by the author are set. It’s set in an area of space far from the planets protagonists of other stories so it can be read completely autonomously.

About two years after the events told in “The Pride of Chanur” Pyanfar Chanur and her crew return to Meetpoint station but with the consequences of what happened in the first novel. Her husband Khym Mahn was the lord of his clan on the planet Anuurn but was ousted and started traveling with his wife. It’s a new situation since hani males are considered unstable so Khym is kept under control.

The hope for Pyanfar Chanur on arrival at the station is to be able to conduct normal business negotiations but the beginning of “Chanur’s Venture” seems too much of a deja-vu because she gets involved again in various machinations of various species and at the center there’s once more the human Tully. The big difference is that this time Tully hasn’t escaped the kif but arrived willingly to open trade relations between humans and at least some species of the Compact.

For Pyanfar Chanur this is a huge opportunity with potential benefits for all hani but Tully’s presence gets her in trouble again, this time even bigger than those of two years earlier. In fact now Tully is no longer an alien who belongs to an unknown species but the representative of a species whose relationship with the Compact could change many internal balances.

The kif seek to prevent contacts with humans but between them there’s another power struggle and Pyanfar Chanur ends up involved in it too. Against humans there are also the stsho, a species very attentive to business relationships. The stsho are also often involved in various machinations to increase their wealth at the expense of other species and they see humans as a threat to their influence.

All this makes the plot of “Chanur’s Venture” even more complex than that of “The Pride of Chanur” because Pyanfar Chanur not only must save her own life, her crew and Tully but has also the further problem of figuring out who are her friends or at least who have the convenience to make her survive and who are her enemies. A situation where help comes from a kif while an obstacle comes from other hani is far from ideal.

Pyanfar Chanur would never want to get into a such a precarious situation but the circumstances were set by others and she was forced to adapt. As in “The Pride of Chanur”, in “Chanur’s Venture” C.J. Cherryh is good at developing in particular Pyanfar Chanur’s many feelings and emotions during this new adventure in which her husband suddenly becomes the least of her worries.

The result is a story that in some ways is a variant of “The Pride of Chanur” made more complex by the fact that the stakes are higher and this also increases the tension. C.J. Cherryh keeps on developing the protagonists and at the same time provides additional information on the species of the Compact through details included in the plot and with some appendixes as well.

For these reasons, in my opinion the quality of “Chanur’s Venture” remains high but, unlike the first novel, this one doesn’t have a real ending but is the first part of a trilogy. I recommend reading it but you must be aware that you will also need its sequels to complete the story.