I've noticed how, in Cherryh's latests works, the opposite is true. she explains the living daylights out of things---but not in a straightforward fashion! she hints and cajoles the reader down certain ways of thinking, towards the next revelation, and re-examines related key issues over and over and over from different aspects, but she never comes out and says what the reader is expecting her to say. that is, of course, one way to keep your readers in suspence. but I'm sure she is quite aware that when her many fans clamour for her attention and beg for more details, they mean they want a more straightforward look at the worlds she creates. the paradox is, if she gave that to them, the effect would be ruined and nobody would want to read the books. so, this giving of many explanations without actually revealing anything that she wouldn't traditionally reveal, is a compromise. an exacerbating compromise, because it puts the reader through the ringer even more so than her earlier works, and Cherryh is very good at putting the reader through the ringer. these stories tend to be longer, and divided into triologies (not three stories in a trilogy, but one story in a trilogy arc that includes three books). tend a bit more towards space opera.
Hunter of Worlds was published in 1977, and fits the first description. in it, we are introduced to an alien universe with three different alien species complete with their own cultures and languages and beliefs. Hunter of Worlds is a bit linguistics-heavy... it is what I call a concept book.
if in some sci-fi, the author coins a word for an alien animal (say, garblio), and we see this word used off and on throughout the book, well, it's expected. there aren't any creatures that look like a cross between an armadillo and a penguin here on Earth, so we don't have a name for that. of course the author has to make up the word garblio. it's best of course if they actually include a picture of a garblio or at least a very brilliant passage describing this creature, but this is all to be expected in much of sci-fi.
if we are asked to learn what a garblio is, that's not a real problem. we can remember that. what becomes confusing is if most or all of the animals there on planet/spaceship X have no Earthly comparisons. yes, it's when the characters make their way through and interact with a field full of garblios, nekwitetters, modoneds, and jesuviars that the reader starts getting lost. which was the man-eating carnivore again? which one was the long-lost pet of the mad scientist?
it's not impossible to learn the new words and keep them all sorted, and in fact for some of us it's rather fun lol, but it is quite a task.
especially when we're not talking about animals but instead symbolic things like justice, honour, beauty, truth, or some combination of those that only occurs in an alien culture (or, well, we might have it but we don't have a word for it, whereas that alien culture reveres it as much as we do our justice). those kind of symbolic words are hard to define and pin down when they're ones we actually know (truth, justice, the american way). but when it's supposed to be an innovative concept... oi vey! a whole new level of challenge.
for example: kastien - being oneself; virtue, wisdom; observing harmony with others and the universe by perfect centering in one's giyre toward all person and things.
oh, wait. what was giyre again? recognition of one's proper place in the cosmic Order of things; also, one's proper duty to another. it is ideally mutual.
but those are just two concepts here, and they're only representative of one species. there are three species (not counting humanity) in the book, remember?
so we've also got arastiethe, shakhshoph, vaikka, elethia... etc. those are (some of) the symbolic words, but we've also got new words for new technology (ex: chiabres), different relationship-types (ex: asuthe, kamethi, nasul, orithain, sra), different place names (ex: Esliph, Kesuat, Kej), and then of course the names of the species (Kalliran, Amaut, Iduve) and the ships and the characters!
there is a glossary at the back of this book. you will need it.
in her later works she is much more skillful about adding the new words in there at a more approachable pace... however, most everything that makes me love Cherryh's writing is there, if not developed to its full fruition. this is a book that you reread, and reread, and then when you realize you don't have to look anything up anymore, then its craft unfolds completely (and not in the satisfying yet broken way it did during all the previous reads).
399:
"I prefer to proceed toward infallibility at my own unhurried pace..."
(and yet, if she had just listened to them and secured the loose cannon, so to speak, that would have kept the obvious from happening. oh, you know it's going to happen, you just don't know when. Cherryh is ALWAYS doing that. just for once can't we lock the psychopath up or eliminate them completely? it's like suspending James Bond over a lake full of hungry crocodiles. for goodness sakes, just shoot him already! at least give him a tranquilizer or something. you know he's going to get away!)
450:
He was bitterly ashamed of the grief his perverted emotion had brought her in all things, for in one private part of his thoughts he knew absolutely what he had done, saw through his own pretenses... The contradictions were madness; they gathered about him like a great darkness, in which nothing was understandable.
