The long-awaited (approximately two decades) sequel to Cyteen. This picks up mere months after the events in Cyteen and all takes place over a few months time. Compared to the timescale of Cyteen which follows the death of the first Ariane Emory and the growth to early adulthood of her clone, this is a breakneck pace. There are some retcons in here, such as the xeplanation of the inconsistent numbering of some of the Azi in Cyteen, and the introduction of a few Azi who didn’t appear in the first, giving all the Reseune natural born senior people at least one Azi companion. There’s also an attempt to deal with the outdated computer terminology and the introduction of more advanced computing systems. Other than that the basic set-up remains the same and the storyline continues on where Cyteen left off in both personal and political terms. The mystery of what really happened to Ariane Emory I is revealed, though it’s a little bit of a violation of the law of Chekov’s gun. This is a nice read, but sadly not up to the masterpiece qualities of Cyteen. Then again that was always going to be a hard act to follow and twenty years on even more so. It’s clearly written with scope for another sequel, but whether it will get one is, I think, doubtful. It’s less demanding of one than Cyteen, possibly because  Cherryh has an honesty towards her fans and so leaves things open enough for an interesting further installment without leaving so many juggling balls up in the air it leaves one slightly unsatisfied (as the slightly abrupt ending of Cyteen did for me, being it’s only major flaw, I think) given how long this took to get commissioned. Definitely worth reading if you like Cyteen.