Merchanter's Luck [Import] [Paperback]

C. J. Cherryh (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Mandarin (1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0413530701
• ISBN-13: 978-0413530707
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)

More About the Author

I've written sf and fantasy for publication since 1975...but I've written a lot longer than that. I have a background in Mediterranean archaeology, Latin, Greek, that sort of thing; my hobbies are travel, photography, planetary geology, physics, pond-building for koi...I run a marine tank, can plumb most anything, and I figure-skate.

I believe in the future: I'm an optimist for good reason---I've studied a lot of history, in which, yes, there is climate change, and our species has been through it. We've never faced it fully armed with what we now know, and if we play our cards right, we'll use it as a technological springboard and carry on in very interesting ways.

I also believe a writer owes a reader a book that has more than general despair to spread about: I write about clever, determined people who don't put up with situations, not for long, anyway: people who find solutions inspire me.

My personal websites and blog: http://www.cherryh.com
http://www.cherryh.com/WaveWithoutAShore
http://www.closed-circle.net

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Complex characters and a lively realistic plot, May 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Merchanter's Luck (Alliance-Union Universe) (Paperback)

This is a must read book for those that like to think about what kind of cultures could develop in the future as humans expand into outer space. The book dicusses the hardships of a family ship raided by space pirates. The one survivor tries to keep his family memories alive by aligning himself with one of the major merchant powers. The book also gives the other side of the story from the eyes of the corporate family. It gives a realistic feel of what it may be like to live in a corprate ship with long lived family members.

The book also gives the reader with a dream he or she can identify: "To be free but to live your traditions."

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cherryh's early stuff is still her best . . ., July 9, 2003

By 

Michael K. Smith (South Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Merchanter's Luck (Alliance-Union Universe) (Paperback)

Carolyn Cherryh has the true storyteller's knack of being able to approach a huge, sprawling, complexly plotted yarn in terms of its constituent characters and events. But where _Downbelow Station_ -- which you really ought to have read in order to grasp all the back-story and milieu of this future -- is a tangled skein, _Merchanter's Luck_ is a single twist of two threads. Sandor Kreja is the only surviving member of the trading family that operated and lived aboard LUCY, a down-at-the-heels merchant ship not unlike a tramp steamer, carrying small cargoes and unfussy passengers and getting by on the margins of life. Allison Reilly, on the other hand, is a promising member of the large, wealthy mercantile family that inhabits DUBLIN AGAIN, a name to be reckoned with and respected among the stations whose ports it frequents. But that's just the problem: The Reilly family is *too* large. Allison is likely to be on rejuv herself by the time she climbs the advancement ladder far enough to be able to sit the bridge. They meet happenstantially, Sandy is completely taken with the tall, beautiful, regal Allie, and when DUBLIN goes off to Pell on the next leg of her trading loop among the stations, he pilots LUCY through a series of jumps singlehandedly in order to follow her. One thing leads to another, and when his past, checkered like that of all marginers, leads to potential major troubles with the Alliance and with the ominous Captain Mallory of the warship NORWAY (a shivver-provoking force in _Downbelow Station_), Allie jumps in to help him -- and, not incidentally, herself -- by leaving her family with a few like-minded cousins and making a crew for LUCY. But now, Sandor has to learn to trust others with his ship and its ghosts, and the Dubliners have to learn to trust someone who's not one of them. Cherryh is also expert at divulging her characters' minds and motivations through telling detail, so everyone you'll meet here is fully realized. And their story becomes the kind of tale merchanters, and even stationers, will tell each other for many years in the portside bars of Pell and Viking.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard sf with characters you can care about!, May 3, 2000

By 

Gary Jonas "author of Modern Sorcery" (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Merchanter's Luck (Alliance-Union Universe) (Paperback)

What a gem of a book MERCHANTER'S LUCK turned out to be. It's short and it packs an emotional punch. At its heart, the book is about trust. How do you know when to trust someone? What can it cost you? Set in Cherryh's brilliantly rendered universe, it can cost you your life and your very heart and soul. The universe feels lived in and the characters all ring so true you'd swear they were real (in spite of the fact that they are cruising the galaxy in spaceships!). People who complain that hard science fiction is only about ideas and never gives you characters you can care about have clearly not read C.J. Cherryh. She gives you both and by doing so, her books transcend the genre.