{"id":3807,"date":"2011-01-12T23:54:33","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T06:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=3807"},"modified":"2011-01-12T23:54:33","modified_gmt":"2011-01-13T06:54:33","slug":"merchanters-luck-by-c-j-cherryh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/merchanters-luck-by-c-j-cherryh\/","title":{"rendered":"Merchanter’s Luck by C. J. Cherryh"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>He was a down and out merchanter, the captain, crew, and sole proprietor of a run-down bucket of bolts spacecraft.\u00a0 She was a daughter of one of the finest starfaring clans, with seven hundred cousins standing between her and the one thing she wanted more than anything else: command of a starship.<\/p>\n

They met at Pell during the height of the Company War–the key strategic point on the border between Union and Earth.\u00a0 Their fateful meeting would affect not only the outcome of the war, but the course of their own lives–for the starship Lucy<\/em> of Wyatt’s Combine was not at all what she seemed to be.<\/p>\n

Before I review this book, I need to issue a disclaimer: you probably aren’t going to enjoy it very much unless you’ve already read Downbelow Station<\/em>.\u00a0 Cherryh isn’t the best at easing her readers into her worlds, and without the background on Union, Alliance, and the Company War, you’ll probably be hopelessly lost.<\/p>\n

That said, I absolutely loved<\/em> this book.<\/p>\n

The premise is so awesome.\u00a0 Space adventure hardcore, with a beautiful love story set amidst an epic interstellar war, where alliances are constantly broken and no one can be trusted…oh man, I LOVED<\/em> this book!<\/p>\n

While the premise seems pretty standard, C. J. Cherryh transcends the well-worn tropes and cliches of her genre by intimately developing her characters and working their motivations into the story until they are the ones driving the plot, and not the other way around.<\/p>\n

Every character is unique, and though they act in ways that may seem strange to our modern sensibilities, there are always reasons for everything they do, cultural or otherwise.\u00a0 As windows into their far-future spacefaring culture, they give the reader a wonderful view of Cherryh’s unique and marvelously constructed universe.<\/p>\n

The thing that surprised me the most, however, was the sharp contrast between this book and Downbelow Station.<\/em> While Downbelow Station<\/em> traces the epic arc of the Company War through the viewpoints of a large cast of characters, much like Tolkien or Dune, Merchanter’s Luck<\/em> focuses more on the characters themselves, in much the same way as David Gemmell or Ursula K. Le Guin.\u00a0 In other words, while Downbelow Station<\/em> is comparable to “high” or epic fantasy, Merchanter’s Luck<\/em> would fall closer to “low” fantasy or sword & sorcery.<\/p>\n

The interesting self-realization I took from the book was that I’m much more interested in the intimately personal stories than the sweeping epic tale of the Rise and Fall of cultures and civilizations.\u00a0 I suppose that’s why I’m more of a David Gemmell nut than a Tolkien fanatic, and perhaps why I’m more into space opera and military sf than epic fantasy.\u00a0 In all of my novels, the focus is always on the individual characters and their personal conflicts, and whenever I get sidetracked and focus too much on the overworld story, it always falls apart.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Merchanter’s Luck<\/em> definitely doesn’t get sidetracked, and that’s why I loved it so much.\u00a0 I fell in love with the characters almost from the very first page–from the blurb on the back cover, even.\u00a0 And most of all, I fell hopelessly in love with the starship Lucy<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>You know you’re doing science fiction right when your readers bemoan the fact that they weren’t born in the 26th century, when they could command their own spaceship.\u00a0 C. J. Cherryh is an amazing writer, and if I had the chance, I would teleport into her Union-Alliance universe in a heartbeat.<\/p>\n

If you love well-crafted far-future worlds and stories about the people that live in them, check out Downbelow Station<\/em> (or really, just the first chapter–that’s all you need for a solid grounding) and read this book!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He was a down and out merchanter, the captain, crew, and sole proprietor of a run-down bucket of bolts spacecraft.\u00a0 She was a daughter of one of the finest starfaring clans, with seven hundred cousins standing between her and the one thing she wanted more than anything else: command of a starship. They met at… Continue reading Merchanter’s Luck by C. J. Cherryh<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[183,112,193,376,1005,501,160,421,184,499,1510,72],"class_list":["post-3807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-c-j-cherryh","tag-character","tag-conflict","tag-epic-fantasy","tag-heroic-fantasy","tag-j-r-r-tolkien","tag-romance","tag-science-fiction-romance","tag-space-opera","tag-sword-sorcery","tag-ursula-k-le-guin","tag-worldbuilding","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-Zp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3807"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3934,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807\/revisions\/3934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}