Hunter of Worlds
by C. J. Cherryh
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Aiela, a member of the kalliran race, is an appealing character who has interesting relationships with several characters in the book. But the most fannish is his bond with Daniel. They are forcibly mindlinked by the iduve - so mentally entwined that one of them can be disciplined by torturing the other. Daniel, being rather more fractious than any kallia would be, proves quite a trial for poor Aiela. Chimele, the ruler of the iduve, is rather cat-like. Not in looks, but in personality. I've heard that she was inspired by C'Mell, from Cordwainer Smith's "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell." Only instead of being a lowly girly-girl, she's the leader of a natural master race! Hunter of Worlds is out of print as a standalone, but used copies are readily available. Also, it's half of an omnibus called At the Edge of Space. (The other half is another early Cherryh classic of alien male bonding, Brothers of Earth.) You can also buy autographed copies from C.J. Cherryh's official site.
Dancing Badger's Hunter of Worlds review - Glowing! Whatsamatta-u review - Also very positive. C.J. Cherryh's Worlds - C.J. Cherryh's official site. Shejidan - The name of this site is from the Foreigner series, but it's a general Cherryh site, with art, discussion, etc. IMO, the best Cherryh site on the net.
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This is possibly my favorite Cherryh book (which means it's one of my favorite books of all time). It was one of the first ones she wrote, but it already displays her trademark strengths. She creates not one but three distinct alien races here, each with its own language, values, and culture. It has everything I've come to expect from a Cherryh novel: the immersion in an alien culture, the Byzantine politics, strong female characters, and most of all the charismatic characters and intense relationships. Probably if she had written this story later in her career, it would be a multi-volume series, like Chanur or Foreigner. But there's something to be said for brevity. Hunter of Worlds is in many ways more accessible than her later works. It's pared to the essentials - concentrated Cherryh. Though the book deals with many of the same themes Cherryh dealt with in later works, I found this one more daring than her usual "getting to know you" books about aliens. When you get right down to it, the iduve are slavers. That's about as unsympathetic as you can get. It's theoretically possible for a murderer to have a worthy motivation, but how can you possibly justify enslaving other intelligent, sentient beings? Yet somehow, she manages to show the iduve as merely alien, not evil.