I thought it might be interesting to post something different than a movie review. This is a brief look and review of a Science Fiction book. The book is “Downbelow Station” written in 1981 by C J Cherryh. Downbelow Station along with another book named “Merchanters Luck” form the historical backdrop for a very rich Science Fiction universe she created called the “Alliance-Union universe”.
Brief Overview:
Downbelow Station is the story of the closing stages of what was called “The Company War” in her universe. This war was between the Earth Company and Union. Union started as a group of merchants rebelling against mistreatment and taxation from the Earth Company and grew into a major power in its own right. By the time of the book Union is very strong and the Earth Company has been in the throes of political problems for a while, leaving their own forces out unsupported to the point where they are now a patchwork of badly outnumbered ships with EXTEMEMLY proficient crews.
This is where the novel starts off. From there it tells the story of the end of the War through the eyes of a group of characters. They are:
Damon Konstantin – one of the Konstantin family who built and run Pell Station, which is where most of the action takes place.
Elene Quen – Damon’s wife and part of the Quen merchant family. She is also the dockmaster of Pell.
Segust Ayres – Earth Company diplomat sent to try to negotiate an armistice with Union.
Joshua Talley – Refugee on Pell from another station.
Conrad Mazian – Commander in Chief of the Earth Company Fleet
Signy Mallory – Captain of the Earth Company Fleet carrier (kind of like a battlestar) Norway.
I won’t go further so as not to spoil things.
Review:
Simply put, this book is VERY well written.
Notice the little historical introduction I wrote earlier? Cherryh has a somewhat longer, more detailed and very readable one right at the start. It is like it’s own micro-novel and pretty engrossing. Even better, once one dives into the main story it leaves one able to put context to the events depicted. Having read novels where the “foreward” was not well written which made “getting into” the main story harder, this was a breath of fresh air.
In addition, those characters I listed above are all well written. They are not cardboard at all – not even the “bad guys” but are layered personalities. What also makes them really work is that the military characters “feel military” and the civilians feel civilian. None of that SGU nonsense where the military are depicted as undisciplined fools. In fact, the Mallory character has been held up before as one of the best female Science Fiction characters written and definitely at the top of the heap in the subgenre of military Sci-Fi. Interesting aside – Cherryh apparently drew the Mallory character based on military people she knew who had come out of combat duty in Vietnam.
The plot flows pretty crisply and is logical – again this is helped by the superb introduction section which provides the all important context for the actions of the characters. When the end events come one actually feel like they have been building for the length of the book and so they don’t feel like the “out of nowhere” stuff we see all too often. This doesn’t mean that the first time one read it they are not surprising – they are. But even as one reads one winds up saying “I can see how this happened”.
All in all a winner – the book can be obtained from Amazon at the very least. I don’t know if it is in eBook format yet.
Brief Overview:
Downbelow Station is the story of the closing stages of what was called “The Company War” in her universe. This war was between the Earth Company and Union. Union started as a group of merchants rebelling against mistreatment and taxation from the Earth Company and grew into a major power in its own right. By the time of the book Union is very strong and the Earth Company has been in the throes of political problems for a while, leaving their own forces out unsupported to the point where they are now a patchwork of badly outnumbered ships with EXTEMEMLY proficient crews.
This is where the novel starts off. From there it tells the story of the end of the War through the eyes of a group of characters. They are:
Damon Konstantin – one of the Konstantin family who built and run Pell Station, which is where most of the action takes place.
Elene Quen – Damon’s wife and part of the Quen merchant family. She is also the dockmaster of Pell.
Segust Ayres – Earth Company diplomat sent to try to negotiate an armistice with Union.
Joshua Talley – Refugee on Pell from another station.
Conrad Mazian – Commander in Chief of the Earth Company Fleet
Signy Mallory – Captain of the Earth Company Fleet carrier (kind of like a battlestar) Norway.
I won’t go further so as not to spoil things.
Review:
Simply put, this book is VERY well written.
Notice the little historical introduction I wrote earlier? Cherryh has a somewhat longer, more detailed and very readable one right at the start. It is like it’s own micro-novel and pretty engrossing. Even better, once one dives into the main story it leaves one able to put context to the events depicted. Having read novels where the “foreward” was not well written which made “getting into” the main story harder, this was a breath of fresh air.
In addition, those characters I listed above are all well written. They are not cardboard at all – not even the “bad guys” but are layered personalities. What also makes them really work is that the military characters “feel military” and the civilians feel civilian. None of that SGU nonsense where the military are depicted as undisciplined fools. In fact, the Mallory character has been held up before as one of the best female Science Fiction characters written and definitely at the top of the heap in the subgenre of military Sci-Fi. Interesting aside – Cherryh apparently drew the Mallory character based on military people she knew who had come out of combat duty in Vietnam.
The plot flows pretty crisply and is logical – again this is helped by the superb introduction section which provides the all important context for the actions of the characters. When the end events come one actually feel like they have been building for the length of the book and so they don’t feel like the “out of nowhere” stuff we see all too often. This doesn’t mean that the first time one read it they are not surprising – they are. But even as one reads one winds up saying “I can see how this happened”.
All in all a winner – the book can be obtained from Amazon at the very least. I don’t know if it is in eBook format yet.
