1985’s Angel With a Sword is the first work in C. J. Cherryh’s Merovingen Nights series.

The sharrh objected to human use of the planet Merovin. Accordingly, the aliens did their best to expunge humanity from that world. Some survived. Their unfortunate descendants now enjoy lives of abject poverty on a planet cut off from interstellar civilization.

Altair Jones, for example.

Having inherited a boat from her late mother, Jones plies the waterways of the semi-submerged city of Merovingen. It’s a life of hard work for a precarious subsistence living. Jones has learned to be prudent, to keep to herself, to keep her head down, to avoid unpleasant, possibly fatal, complications.

Too bad for Jones that the naked man tossed off a bridge into Merovingen’s polluted waterways is so handsome.

Jones fishes the unconscious Thomas Mondragon out of the water. Almost miraculously, he survives his dip in the toxic canal. The more Jones sees of the fellow — and the complete lack of clothes lets her see a lot — the more the sixteen-year-old likes what she sees1.

Mondragon is handsome and obviously rich. Mondragon is also annoyingly immune to Jones’ charms, at least at first. Still, nothing worth having can be had without effort. Jones is used to hard work. Thus, ignoring every prudent instinct, Jones sticks with Mondragon.

Mondragon is curiously reticent about why he was attacked, stripped, and tossed off a bridge into the canal. In part, his motive is to protect Jones from affairs that should not concern her. The flaw in his approach is that proximity to Mondragon is all the reason Mondragon’s enemies need to target Jones.

_oOo

Mondragon’s reticence where Jones is concerned might have less to do with her age or her forthright manner in proposing a carnal relationship and more to do with the fact that Jones doesn’t bathe regularly (something she cannot do, under her straitened circumstances). Thanks to their open-minded policy regarding canal pollution2, Merovingen is short on water you’d want to dip a toe in, let alone use to clean one’s body.

*Angel *is listed as book zero of the Merovingen Nights series at ISFDB. I applaud the mathematical inclusiveness but… as my site doesn’t let me list book zero, I will count it as book one.

This is the very first time I’ve read this particular Cherryh novel. Why skipped?

First, although even a cursory glance inside would have revealed that this is science fiction, I thought it was a fantasy; deciphering Cherryh’s fantasies sometimes requires more work than I care to invest at that time.

Second, this book and its sequel, 1987’s Festival Moon, became the basis for a shared-world series. By the late 1980s, I’d been burned more often than not with shared worlds. Didn’t want to invest any time in this one.

So Angel will have to serve as the sole example of the Merovingen Nights series. I only have ten more spots in this project before it’s done; if I were to read and review all the other books in the series, I would use up eight spots. No room, no room3!

But to return to the book.

For the most part Jones gets enough sleep. Otherwise, she is an exemplary Cherryh protagonist, whose lack of vital, need-to-know information is underlined by impending peril.

Skipping Angel was a huge mistake on my part. After a brief introduction to the setting, the plot begins without further delay, proceeding at high speed until the end… which, thanks to extensive notes from the author, arrives much sooner than the reader will expect from the paperback’s thickness.

As far as I can tell, Angel With a Sword is out of print. Not sure why. Rights can be an issue with reprints of shared-world series but this was a stand-alone novel. Still, it is worth keeping an eye for if you are in a used bookstore.

1: Possibly seventeen. Jones is not sure.

2: USA delenda est.

3: Oh, and the series features a contribution by filk’s own Ezra Pound, the late noted right-wing lunatic and all-around loathsome bigot Leslie Fish, noted for such achievements as transphobia, climate change denial, Islamophobia, Sandy Hook conspiracy theories, and so on and so forth. Hell will freeze over before I review something by her. Although I read her obit with great pleasure.

I assume she was merely eccentric back in the 1980s, but that’s how crank magnetism works.