This book is set in Cherryh's Union-Alliance Universe, but stands alone very well. Don't feel like you need to read anything else to enjoy this one, and enjoy it you will!

The basic premise doesn't seem very original - new colony starting out a fresh inviting earth type planet. It quickly departs from the expected and turns darker. From the way the 'azi' are transported and the rest of the colony shipped out to the reasons for the colony's very existence it's unsettling and thought provoking.
It continues on for the next 200 years without ever losing the darker edge.

It's not space opera moving the plot along with Hollywood abandon, but it's also not as 'meta' and internalized as many of Cherryh's other novels often are. A long book split into eight major parts, I suspect it was originally conceived as a trilogy or at least multiple novels, and then pared back. My biggest criticism of the whole book is the uneven transitions between some of those parts, which is only partially covered up by the change of characters and generations.

Start to finish it's a rewarding narrative of the rise of new culture from the mismatched building blocks of several old ones. Worth reading more than once. ( )

This is really kind of a mess. There is some didactic idea behind the book, but the story is largely missing. We get an actual story line somewhere past the halfway point, but it is short-changed. The first part of the books is over-extended backstory and notes, the sort of stuff that Tolkien put in the appendices. This could have been a good book if it had been subjected to a bold editor with a machete. What we have instead is a choppy slog without much of a point. ( )

deserted human colony comes to strange terms with reptile-like natives

A sweeping multi-generational saga detailing the adaptation of humans to a world where the dominant sapient life form is so bizarre in its mentation that it necessitates a shift in human consciousness to connect with it. ( )

The was originally published in 1983, making it one of Cherryh's earlier works, and it is easy to see the development of many themes that Cherryh later mines for gold in the "Foreigner" series: the epic sweep of nations and politics, human/alien cultural divides, and individual endurance (in fact, it is easy to compare 40,000 to Foreigner, as the last half of the book centers around the observations and experiences of a "starman diplomat" to the native Gehennans). This is a book to savor, not just for Cherryh's excellent use of language and descriptions, but because of the hugeness of the story, which covers several hundred years of history and the lives of many characters.

It is an eminently satisfying read, and as usual Cherryh brings to life not only the human characters in all their glory and with all their faults (her humans are always, always genuinely, humanly flawed) but also the alien "dragons" of Gehenna, who are fascinating but truly otherworldly creatures. ( )