YMMV / Alien Chronicles

• Complete Monster: Ehssk is the glory-seeking head researcher at the Vess Vaas institute, responsible for finding a cure for the Dancing Death plague long feared by the Viis. Noting that the various abiru species are immune to the disease, Ehssk studies the possibility of splicing their immunity over to the Viis. To this end, Ehhsk uses captive abiru women as Breeding Slaves, artificially impregnating them with half-Viis hybrids. The hybrids are dissected shortly after birth, and the women killed off when they can no longer reproduce. Ehssk's research produces few, if any, useful results, despite the horrors his test subjects are put through, yet the Viis Empire continues to give him a blank check out of desperation to cure the Dancing Death, oblivious to Ehssk's methods and unwilling to call out his lack of results; said funding allows Ehssk to maintain an extravagant lifestyle. Even the Viis Empress Israi is horrified to learn that he artificially impregnated Ampris and dissected her daughter shortly after birth.
• Contested Sequel: While The Crystal Eye brought a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, it's also the source of some of its more divisive elements. In addition to quite a few major Idiot Ball moments, it introduces several characters that some readers have found annoying, such as Velia and Ampris' now-adolescent sons, Nashmarl and Foloth.
• Cry for the Devil:
  • Ylea is a female Aaroun gladiator on the team Ampris ends up in. The two get off to a very bad start, and even with Ampris' attempts to reconcile Ylea tries to get her killed during a two-on-two fight they were teamed up for. After Ampris is forced to kill Ylea in self-defense, Elrabin reveals that Ylea was once a member of the free abiru that live in the wilderness outside of Viis cities. She was captured by slavers, her family was slain, and she was conditioned to become a rage-filled killing machine for gladiatorial entertainment. Ampris is deeply sorrowful over Ylea's past, but Elrabin believes that if Ampris had known about it then she might have let her guard down enough for Ylea to have killed her.
  • Israi gets a bit of this, especially in the third book as her reign as Kaa progresses. The weight of ruling a crumbling empire is clearly taking a toll on her, not helped by the typical scheming and intrigue of the royal court. And where her father at least had strong bonds with his family, she realizes that she has spent so little time with her own children that they treat her like a dignitary who occasionally visits their nursery rather than a loved one. She also misses her nursemaid Subi after the old Kelth passes away, and has bittersweet nostalgia for her carefree childhood and friendship with Ampris.
• Fanfic Fuel: Given that several Star Wars texts reference elements of Alien Chronicles - and that the two settings slot together nicely due to originally being intended as one and the same - it's quite easy to depict the events of Alien Chronicles taking place in the Star Wars universe. While only a handful of Alien Chronicles fanfics exist, a couple of them run with this very idea.
• Inferred Holocaust: Averted. One would think that a hasty exodus of under-equipped slaves to a new planet with an alien ecosystem would run into some issues, but the Eye of Clarity shows Ampris a vision of the free and healthy society that the abiru will build on Ruu-113, neatly allaying such concerns.
• Moral Event Horizon: Many of them are perpetrated upon Ampris, in case you were wondering. Israi, who never was very moral to begin with, crosses this completely after Ampris holds her temporarily prisoner in the Palace Archives in Book 3. She immediately retaliates by destroying the Archives, including all knowledge of how to save the empire. Just for good measure, when things start to really go pear-shaped, the first thing Israi does is set up Holocaust-style death camps and start a mass slaughter of the abiru.
• Narm Charm: In the audiobook adaptation, it's clear many of the voice actors are going all in. Aaroun characters growl and yowl, Kelth characters whine and whimper, and Viis characters make liberal use of Sssssnake Talk. But it's the Phivean and Zrheli characters who sound truly bizarre, if not outright silly. It all still comes across as quite charming, though.
• The Scrappy:
  • Ampris's sons, though the original intention seems to have been potential sequels showing the two as the new abiru society's Romulus and Remus, or possibly even Cain and Abel given how they clash. Sadly, it never came to pass.
  • Elrabin's love interest Velia also seems to have rubbed some readers the wrong way, given her annoying attitude and behavior.
• Sweetness Aversion: Some of Ampris' speeches or reactions to Jerkass complaints can come across like this.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Given how frequently characters are subject to What Happened to the Mouse?, quite a few interesting characters are given little time to be developed or are left with unknown fates.
  • Lady Zureal is possibly the only Viis character in the series to be truly sympathetic, especially in her kindness towards Ampris, her eagerness to build bridges with Israi, and her genuinely happy romance with Sahmrahd Kaa. Israi's prank against her - along with the disastrous results - is also a major turning point in the lives of all involved. But even though Zureal's presence would presumably be a major factor in Israi's life, at least while her father is alive, Zureal is never even mentioned again after the first book.
  • The Blues gladiator team is given a fair amount of focus during the second book. Yet even though Ampris' career with them coincides with her years spent laying the foundations for the Freedom Network, there's never any indication that her teammates are aware of her work or would support it if they knew of it. If anything, Teinth - one of the more characterized members of the team - seems to be torn between his romantic feelings for Ampris and his cynicism for what little of her ideals she expresses around him. Regardless of what the others on the team might feel about Ampris' fledgling resistance movement, or the implications for the plot if they had joined it or even continued where Ampris left off during her years living in the wilderness, the Blues never appear again after Ampris' sale to Vess Vaas.
  • During her time imprisoned in the Vess Vaas, Ampris is introduced to a number of prisoners already held in the facility and used as test subjects in its horrific research. These include Ophah (one of two Phiveans named in the entire trilogy) and Shevin (a Kelth stated to be little older than a child, possibly being a mere teenager). However, both of them are taken away and implied to be killed before Ampris can organize an escape. This seems like a waste considering that the only other Phivean in the trilogy had some very interesting things to say about the Eye of Clarity, and that Shevin could have awakened some parental instinct and subsequent character growth in Elrabin (who had a very poor relationship with his own family) or Ampris (who loses her own daughter after being subject to the same nightmarish experimentation as Shevin). Even with the three named characters that do escape the lab with Ampris, Robuhl abruptly stops getting mentioned halfway through the third book and Matiril is simply never mentioned again after the second book.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Despite its significance in Ampris' personal journey, very little is explained about the Eye of Clarity. There's mention of multiple Eyes of Clarity appearing across several species' histories, which only raises more questions on their nature. The Eye's range of powers is also ambiguous, with its ability to teleport Ampris in the third book coming out of left field and never being acknowledged again. It doesn't help that the setting is seemingly devoid of the supernatural outside of the Eye, with it playing surprisingly little role in Ampris' plans to liberate the abiru.
  • Throughout the series, we hear secondhand discussion of a rebellion growing on the fringes of the Viis Empire. By the time of the third book, it has come to encompass much of the Empire's rim worlds, cutting the rest off from vital resources. It has also gathered enough power to actually defeat the Imperial forces sent to combat it, destroying two thirds of the flotilla and sending the rest limping away. However, it's never established what the rebellion's motivations are or who comprises it. The Freedom Network doesn't reach out to them at all, and it doesn't directly factor into their plans.
• Woobie Species: The abiru's original histories and cultures have been all but destroyed by the Viis, who treat them as expendable slave labor kept in line with violence and poverty. The Aaroun especially are said to have had a very rich and vibrant culture, along with the military prowess to initially fend off Viis subjugation. It was only when the Viis resorted to biological warfare that they were forced into surrendering, reducing the once-proud species into glorified slave labor valued only for their physical strength. Two centuries later when the trilogy starts, Aaroun culture is at serious risk of dying out, with precious few scraps surviving despite its discussion being deemed illegal by the Viis.

---