Teaser

The mighty corporations have pushed humanity to the stars, but now threaten to push us into all-out war. On the frontier of civilisation, one small station is about to become a flashpoint of violence . . .

Review

For September’s monthly book club pick, I found a book that had everything going for it. A space opera by an established and well-regarded author. Standalone, but part of a larger universe. Winner of the coveted Hugo Award. A book I’d been meaning to read for several years, but had only recently found a copy of. It sounded perfect. Almost, a cynic might say, too good to be true. Sure enough, I’m not the only one walking away from Downbelow Station with my expectations unfulfilled. The thing is, it’s certainly not a bad book. Just an incredibly messy one. Thankfully, the reasons for this are, in my mind, quite clear. We have the author’s own word on why.

Because it’s an older work, my copy of Downbelow Station comes with a foreword written by Cherryh. From the sate, I’d say it was written for a twentieth anniversary of the book, though that introduction is itself now two and a half decades old. In the introduction, Cherryh talks about initially planning to write a different sort of book, but ended up needing to flesh out the universe first. To me, that’s the clearest explanation of where things started to go wrong. Listen, I’m the sort of man who reads RPG manuals for fun. I love worldbuilding. And the setting Cherryh spends her time building here is a fascinating one. The books alternate title of The Company Wars is even more apt than its final title, because the war between merchants and companies is what really drives this book. It shakes all the pieces in the toybox and sets up an absolutely fascinating state of affairs. Set-up, however, is not enough to make the book work on its own terms. There’s a distinctive feel that the real story is not contained within the pages of Downbelow Station, but in whatever happens next.

Cherryh’s introduction also talks about cutting out a great deal of material, only for her editor to find a way to reinsert it. The book is very clearly divided into acts, chapters, and sub-chapters, all with time stamps of their own. It is, however, all a bit too much. Even with the time stamps, it’s hard to keep track of who is where doing what, let alone why they are doing that there and then. Character motivation was frequently nowhere to be found. at the same time, there are so many competing characters and plotlines that it felt like some could have cut completely without hurting the book as a whole. Sure the aliens were cute, but when there’s a tense stand-off on a space station, I know which I’m more interested in. There’s just too much going on here all at the same time.

It’s worth pointing out that I read this book while suffering from a rather nasty bout of flu, so it’s possible that other people can make better sense of the book than I did. As it happens, I did enjoy reading Downbelow Station, but while I agree with the awards crowd that it’s a good book, I can’t help but shake the feeling that it reads more like the first draft of an even better book. Maybe The Company Wars would have been an excellent trilogy. Cherryh certainly has written a lot of series in her time, so maybe the only real issue here is trying to cram too much into too few pages.

This was my first Cherryh, and for all its faults, Downbelow Station has accomplished something that all books ought to achieve. It’s kept me interested enough to read more by the same author. Which is good, because I’ve already bought one. I’m just not in as much of a rush to read it as I expected to be.

Book Stats

• A Novel of the Alliance/Union Universe
• First Published 1981
• 426 Pages