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This is the most recent Alliance/Union universe book (2019). It has languished in the pile since then, until yesterday, when I picked it up and read it.
This is the earliest chronologically, being about the period just before the Company Wars began, and the beginning of the Merchanters' Alliance, the trade cartel that features heavily in many of the Alliance/Union books. Like most Cherryhs it's dense, information-heavy, and nonetheless absolutely gripping, even though it's set entirely on one small, decrepit and fading space station, and the action mostly consists of people plotting, worrying, thinking about plotting and worrying about plotting, and also the political, economic and psychological implications of an era and specific location when both FTL and sub-light co-exist.
I had to laugh at a review that complained that the book did not consider "cultural diversity", because it's about nothing else. The action is entirely driven by the dramatic and incompatible interests, cultures and worldviews of:
1 Earth, with its multiple national governments and their historical obsession with territorial control, this time applied to space;
2 Earth Company, the intergovernmental consortium that controls Earth's space-related activity (amusingly, Cherryh is careful to point out that it is a generous employer; Cherryh has never dealt in easy stereotypes)
3 Earth Company staff (individually unethical and power-hungry, true) imposed on the hapless Alpha Station;
4 Alpha station administration (legally Earth Company employees but with their own local interests, such as keeping their station population alive);
5 the short-haul FTL ships dedicated tradng among to the tiny string of near-Earth stations anchored by Alpha Station (in desperate economic straits and also trying to stay both alive and solvent),
6 the giant long-haul, culturally alien FTL ships (their crews are giant extended matrilineal families) from the far reaches of human space, completely out of Earth's control,
7 the different space stations, all of them essentially independent polities that are nonetheless interdependent with each other and the FTL ships that support them
8 the shadowy threat of Cyteen, Cherryh's own take on 'Brave New World', not yet known as Union but already culturally alien in a completely different way from all the other human polities
The book is set at the instant where a "jump-point" - Cherryh's FTL enabler - has been discovered near Earth, but the information has not yet been made public. Earth has been cut off from its former colonies and their colonies except by years-long sub-light travel (the differences in psychology from the civilisations where FTL is normalised that this creates is also one of the relevant elements in the book). The inevitability of Earth rejoining space-based humanity is the basis of the constant refrain "Sol is coming" used by different parties with hope (more trade so we can survive!), dread (sudden disruptive intrusion of irredentist imperialists into a delicate political and economic stand-off in the far reaches of human space), and resignation (going to happen, how can we mitigate the damage and protect our own interests).
While much of the plotting is directed at trying to prevent Earth reviving the concept of war, this time at the interstellar scale, those of us who have read the other Alliance/Union novels know perfectly well that it's about to start anyway.
Excellent, except that now I have to go and re-read all the others.
This is the earliest chronologically, being about the period just before the Company Wars began, and the beginning of the Merchanters' Alliance, the trade cartel that features heavily in many of the Alliance/Union books. Like most Cherryhs it's dense, information-heavy, and nonetheless absolutely gripping, even though it's set entirely on one small, decrepit and fading space station, and the action mostly consists of people plotting, worrying, thinking about plotting and worrying about plotting, and also the political, economic and psychological implications of an era and specific location when both FTL and sub-light co-exist.
I had to laugh at a review that complained that the book did not consider "cultural diversity", because it's about nothing else. The action is entirely driven by the dramatic and incompatible interests, cultures and worldviews of:
1 Earth, with its multiple national governments and their historical obsession with territorial control, this time applied to space;
2 Earth Company, the intergovernmental consortium that controls Earth's space-related activity (amusingly, Cherryh is careful to point out that it is a generous employer; Cherryh has never dealt in easy stereotypes)
3 Earth Company staff (individually unethical and power-hungry, true) imposed on the hapless Alpha Station;
4 Alpha station administration (legally Earth Company employees but with their own local interests, such as keeping their station population alive);
5 the short-haul FTL ships dedicated tradng among to the tiny string of near-Earth stations anchored by Alpha Station (in desperate economic straits and also trying to stay both alive and solvent),
6 the giant long-haul, culturally alien FTL ships (their crews are giant extended matrilineal families) from the far reaches of human space, completely out of Earth's control,
7 the different space stations, all of them essentially independent polities that are nonetheless interdependent with each other and the FTL ships that support them
8 the shadowy threat of Cyteen, Cherryh's own take on 'Brave New World', not yet known as Union but already culturally alien in a completely different way from all the other human polities
The book is set at the instant where a "jump-point" - Cherryh's FTL enabler - has been discovered near Earth, but the information has not yet been made public. Earth has been cut off from its former colonies and their colonies except by years-long sub-light travel (the differences in psychology from the civilisations where FTL is normalised that this creates is also one of the relevant elements in the book). The inevitability of Earth rejoining space-based humanity is the basis of the constant refrain "Sol is coming" used by different parties with hope (more trade so we can survive!), dread (sudden disruptive intrusion of irredentist imperialists into a delicate political and economic stand-off in the far reaches of human space), and resignation (going to happen, how can we mitigate the damage and protect our own interests).
While much of the plotting is directed at trying to prevent Earth reviving the concept of war, this time at the interstellar scale, those of us who have read the other Alliance/Union novels know perfectly well that it's about to start anyway.
Excellent, except that now I have to go and re-read all the others.
