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Read all the Cherryh: Merchanter's Luck
May. 18th, 2018 12:34 amI got slightly more votes on Downbelow Station, but I feel like I need to write about Heavy Time/Hellburner first, before I can properly discuss it (because a lot of what I have to say about Downbelow Station relates to my pre-existing love of those books), and that's going to take awhile because I have a LOT to say about those.
So I'll talk about Merchanter's Luck right now, since it's a fairly short, simple book that I read for the first time a few weeks ago (and absolutely LOVED - despite being a relatively less-known standalone of hers, I think it insta-jumped into my favorites of hers on a single read).
This book belongs to the Merchanter/Company Wars branch of Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe. (Most of which are standalones; they can be read in any order.) Interesting little fact I stumbled across the other day: this book was apparently also the entire reason why Downbelow Station was written. She came up with this one first, but needed to work out the political/social backstory for it, and she did that by writing Downbelow Station ... which ended up being much better known. But this was the first book she wrote dealing with the merchanters.
The merchanters, in Alliance-Union, are matrilineal clans of traders whose lives are centered around the ship on which they live and work. In the grand tradition of "introduce the world and then break it", the female protagonist of Merchanter's Luck is someone who does not fit in her closely knit family and their matriarchal-utopian world. Allison is fiercely ambitious, but she is stuck as a junior member of the crew/family, and unlikely to ever achieve the status she craves. So she's on the lookout for a ship of her own.
Enter Sandor, the captain of his own ship, looking for a crew.
What fascinated me about this book is how the back cover blurb suggests a fairly standard romance, and in fact I went into it in part to find out how Cherryh would write a "boy meets girl" story, but it turns out not to be that at all. Or, I should say, it kind of starts out as that -- Sandor and Allison meet and flirt; she's on the prowl for male company, and Sandor's on the prowl for someone to help him run his ship (and also fascinated by her). And then everything goes Pure Cherryh and veers off in a different direction entirely. (A direction that my id liked very much.)
( Spoilers under the cut )
So I'll talk about Merchanter's Luck right now, since it's a fairly short, simple book that I read for the first time a few weeks ago (and absolutely LOVED - despite being a relatively less-known standalone of hers, I think it insta-jumped into my favorites of hers on a single read).
This book belongs to the Merchanter/Company Wars branch of Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe. (Most of which are standalones; they can be read in any order.) Interesting little fact I stumbled across the other day: this book was apparently also the entire reason why Downbelow Station was written. She came up with this one first, but needed to work out the political/social backstory for it, and she did that by writing Downbelow Station ... which ended up being much better known. But this was the first book she wrote dealing with the merchanters.
The merchanters, in Alliance-Union, are matrilineal clans of traders whose lives are centered around the ship on which they live and work. In the grand tradition of "introduce the world and then break it", the female protagonist of Merchanter's Luck is someone who does not fit in her closely knit family and their matriarchal-utopian world. Allison is fiercely ambitious, but she is stuck as a junior member of the crew/family, and unlikely to ever achieve the status she craves. So she's on the lookout for a ship of her own.
Enter Sandor, the captain of his own ship, looking for a crew.
What fascinated me about this book is how the back cover blurb suggests a fairly standard romance, and in fact I went into it in part to find out how Cherryh would write a "boy meets girl" story, but it turns out not to be that at all. Or, I should say, it kind of starts out as that -- Sandor and Allison meet and flirt; she's on the prowl for male company, and Sandor's on the prowl for someone to help him run his ship (and also fascinated by her). And then everything goes Pure Cherryh and veers off in a different direction entirely. (A direction that my id liked very much.)
( Spoilers under the cut )
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