Scattered about the galaxy were the time-space gates of a vanished but not forgotten alien race. In their time, long before the rise of the native civilizations, they had terrorized a hundred worlds - not from villainy but from folly, from tampering with the strands that held a universe together.
Now the task was to uproot these gates, destroy their potency for mischief, take horror out of the hands of the few who hungered for power by misuse of the gates.
This is the story of one such gate and one such world. It is a novel hich introduces a new literary star of the magnitude of Tolkien and Merrit. Andre Norton makes this claim in a special introduction saying that C. J. Cherryh "has drawn an entirely believable hero on an alien and enchanting world, working in bits of customs, beliefs, and history so cleverly that it must certainly exist - somewhere... Reading GATE OF IVREL was an exiting experience for me..."
So it will be for everyone.