A review by outcolder
Forty Thousand in Gehenna by C.J. Cherryh

5.0

It begins with sad and lonely people on space stations and ships, a Cherryh mood I am familiar with, but then it began to move into something like a multigenerational Heimat epic crossed with one of those 19th Century colonist diaries where everything that doesn't "go native" goes wrong. But that was just the first half! My favorite bits came next, with hints of a feminist critique of the prevailing social science research methods of the 1980s and the evil that women academics put up with from supposedly enlightened colleagues. This really had my number and I rage read 100 pages in one night. The climax returns us to more familiar SFF territory with a giant battle involving mud and ET-lizards. I am not sure why I waited so long since finishing my last Cherryh novel to return to her. Planning to read the rest of the Alliance-Union books they have at Vienna's SFF library Villa Fantastica.