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44 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of Cherryh's best . . ., March 11, 2003
I first met Carolyn Cherry(h) at AggieCon in the late '70s, when she was still teaching school in Oklahoma and had just completed her first novel, _Brothers of Earth_. She had written that book in a sort of social vacuum, with no notion of the existence of the fannish world and was amazed at the warm reception she received from a bunch of enthusiastic strangers. That book and its sequels, plus the "Morgaine" trilogy, made me a fan and I enjoyed her work for years, including this first installment in the "Merchanter" series when it first appeared. Unfortunately, success seems to have made her lazy in recent years and she has recently been churning out interminable formulaic series, often sharing the credit with younger writers, and I find most of those efforts to be unreadable. Anyway. Downbelow Station showcases Cherry's inarguable talent for complex but understandable geopolitical plots, many-layered characterization, and truly alien cultures that humans are never really going to fully understand. There are several sides to the conflict here: The Company, now in charge of an isolationist Earth; the Fleet, once the enforcement arm of the Company but now pretty much independent; Union, formed out of the farther worlds of the Beyond and possessed of a new psychological style completely foreign to Earth; Pell, a station circling a planet which circles Tau Ceti, and which only wants to left alone; and the free Merchanters, making a living hauling goods between the worlds and the stations. Pell is a civilized republic in the best tradition, but they're about to lose all that. Mazian's Fleet has been on its own devices for far too long to have a regard for any other culture and is quite willing to destroy a station and all its thousands of inhabitants in order to keep it out of Union's hands. And Union is a chilling example of nascent fascism based on state-controlled cloning. The Merchanters, who are the focus of most of the later books in this universe, must find a way to work together if they are to survive at all. Peopling this tumultuous plot are the Konstantin family, the sort-of Medicis of Pell, willing to believe the best of others and appalled at what power-seekers are doing to their station, especially the Lukas family. And there's Capt. Mallory of Fleet carrier NORWAY, a bloody-minded commander who nevertheless hews to her own kind of morality. And the hisa, the indigines of Downbelow, whose nonviolent assistance to Pell becomes crucial as the story progresses. And Jessad, the Union agent who has his own agenda on Pell. And Josh Talley, ex-Union agent who wants to find a new home there -- or maybe he's not so "ex." And there's a large supporting cast, all of them also exceptionally well developed. This is a fat book, more than 500 pages, but it never slows down and you'll never lose interest. Definitely one of Cherryh's best.
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29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lengthy but satisfying, July 23, 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: Downbelow Station (Alliance-Union Universe) (Paperback)
I had read about C.J. Cherryh's massive Alliance-Union series in a science-fiction encyclopedia and wanted to find a good place to start. The encyclopedia suggested what it considered her two best books, Downbelow Station and Cyteen. As it turned out I could find neither of them immediately, but I kept the two in the back of my mind over the months as I shopped. And, one day, while searching through a bookstore, I found to my pleasant surprise that the publisher had released a new edition of the novel, which I quickly snapped up and read.
Now, to the actual novel. Since I had no prior knowledge of any other Cherryh book, I just held my breath and dove right in. Fortunately, Cherryh does not bog you down in continuity, giving you all the pertinent information right in the first chapter, thus absolving the reader of any feeling that they are missing something that happened previously. The story is an excellent thriller, highlighting a wondrous cast of characters, and giving them a genuine disaster to overcome, allowing the reader to see exactly what makes each character tick as things fall further and further apart. Throw in an interstellar war and numerous subplots and you have probably the finest science-fiction novel on the subject, though its length may daunt less dedicated readers. Still, it remains one of Cherryh's finest works, even today, almost twenty years later
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27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still impressive after all these years, August 19, 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: Downbelow Station (Alliance-Union Universe) (Paperback)
It's been quite a few years since I first read "Downbelow Station", having found a dog-eared copy in a used-book store in Silver Spring, Maryland, and since then just about every book Cherryh ever wrote has come to grace my bookshelf. But still, I come back to this novel, which won the Hugo award in the early 80s (1981, I believe). It's evident from the style that this is one of Cherryh's earlier books; it's not as smooth or sophisticated as "Tripoint" or "Cyteen", both of which are set in the same universe. It does, however, represent a sweeping vision of humanity's possible future, showing not only how we may colonize the stars, but how living among the stars may change us as humans. For it is one of the most impressive things about this book that the characters are human. Over a year after my last re-reading, I still recall Angelo Konstantin, Elene Quen, Jon Lukas, Signy Mallory, Vassily Kressich, Satin and the rest as if they were old friends. "Downbelow Station" is not only a splendid introduction to Cherryh's thoroughly explored and well-populated Alliance-Union universe, it's an excellent introduction to science fiction in general, as a novel that addresses the tough questions of humanity's future
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