Downbelow Station (20th Anniversary) (Daw Book Collectors)

by C. J. Cherryh

Price: $4.95
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DAW, 2001-12-01. Mass Market Paperback. BRAND NEW SOFTCOVER. NEW / 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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