Alliance Rising and foreknowledge
CJ Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe is one of the greatest creations in science fiction.
Downbelow Station is the Hugo Award winning first novel in the series. Even the opening chapter is a sweeping epic, covering three centuries of humanity's expansion into space - and how it goes wrong, leading to the crisis point of the novel. The rest of the books in the series show people on different sides of the great conflict: merchanters, soldiers, scientists, and renegades. Notably, Finity's End feels like a bookend, dealing with the aftermath of the war and the fragile new era of peace.
Alliance Rising is the first new Alliance-Union book in 10 years, by Cherryh and her co-author Jane Fancher. It feels like the other bookend, at the very beginning of events, long before Downbelow Station. It's a time and place as yet unexplored, and the light the authors shine on it is fascinating. It really feels like a window to the future: people with very different mindsets and psychology, and the nitty-gritty detail of how everything operates. Immersive and convincing.
In switching viewpoints to different sides, the Alliance-Union books are excellent at turning our preconceptions on their heads. This one focuses on Alpha Station, which remains loyal to Sol despite severe neglect, and its ships, primarily Galway, where young Ross Monahan is third navigator. Their fortunes are declining, while the new planets Pell and Cyteen are establishing power bases. Alpha Station and its kindred call themselves the First Stars and the others the Farther Stars. They resent that the others call them the Hinder Stars and themselves the Beyond.
It's a slow build with an explosive ending, as tensions grow between the Earth Company forces, the Beyond ships, and the Alpha ships. The characters are sitting on the cusp of history and making decisions that will tip the balance irrevocably.
(As a side note, I love the haunting mystery of Beta Station, where the entire population vanished without a trace. I love that the slower-than-light pusher-ships, with their 10 year voyages, have very different crew cultures because of this. Atlantis is a party ship, its crew letting off steam at the end of each long trip. But Santa Maria, which discovered the abandoned Beta Station, is a paranoid ship, keeping close tabs on its crew when on shore leave.)
The thing about prequels is, so much is coloured by what we know of the future. So all through reading this book, there was the heartbreak of knowing, despite all their valiant efforts, despite the victories they win - war is coming. A devastating war that shatters stations and ships. The Fleet is coming.
And even more than that, I had the ominous realisation:
I don't remember reading about Alpha Station in the future.
I don't remember the ship Galway.
I don't remember the family Monahan.
Their absence is... striking.
I don't know what it's like for a new reader who starts the series with this book. The authors play it completely straight, they don't drop a word of foreshadowing. They just tell the story, and let the readers who know, know.
Also. Kathryn Baron in her Goodreads review says:
Still. Got cold chills when Fletcher is first mentioned. There's meant to be more books in this sequence, so maybe this isn't the story where he dies heroically shutting the hatch... But it's coming.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.
Downbelow Station is the Hugo Award winning first novel in the series. Even the opening chapter is a sweeping epic, covering three centuries of humanity's expansion into space - and how it goes wrong, leading to the crisis point of the novel. The rest of the books in the series show people on different sides of the great conflict: merchanters, soldiers, scientists, and renegades. Notably, Finity's End feels like a bookend, dealing with the aftermath of the war and the fragile new era of peace.
Alliance Rising is the first new Alliance-Union book in 10 years, by Cherryh and her co-author Jane Fancher. It feels like the other bookend, at the very beginning of events, long before Downbelow Station. It's a time and place as yet unexplored, and the light the authors shine on it is fascinating. It really feels like a window to the future: people with very different mindsets and psychology, and the nitty-gritty detail of how everything operates. Immersive and convincing.
In switching viewpoints to different sides, the Alliance-Union books are excellent at turning our preconceptions on their heads. This one focuses on Alpha Station, which remains loyal to Sol despite severe neglect, and its ships, primarily Galway, where young Ross Monahan is third navigator. Their fortunes are declining, while the new planets Pell and Cyteen are establishing power bases. Alpha Station and its kindred call themselves the First Stars and the others the Farther Stars. They resent that the others call them the Hinder Stars and themselves the Beyond.
It's a slow build with an explosive ending, as tensions grow between the Earth Company forces, the Beyond ships, and the Alpha ships. The characters are sitting on the cusp of history and making decisions that will tip the balance irrevocably.
(As a side note, I love the haunting mystery of Beta Station, where the entire population vanished without a trace. I love that the slower-than-light pusher-ships, with their 10 year voyages, have very different crew cultures because of this. Atlantis is a party ship, its crew letting off steam at the end of each long trip. But Santa Maria, which discovered the abandoned Beta Station, is a paranoid ship, keeping close tabs on its crew when on shore leave.)
The thing about prequels is, so much is coloured by what we know of the future. So all through reading this book, there was the heartbreak of knowing, despite all their valiant efforts, despite the victories they win - war is coming. A devastating war that shatters stations and ships. The Fleet is coming.
And even more than that, I had the ominous realisation:
I don't remember reading about Alpha Station in the future.
I don't remember the ship Galway.
I don't remember the family Monahan.
Their absence is... striking.
I don't know what it's like for a new reader who starts the series with this book. The authors play it completely straight, they don't drop a word of foreshadowing. They just tell the story, and let the readers who know, know.
Also. Kathryn Baron in her Goodreads review says:
Still. Got cold chills when Fletcher is first mentioned. There's meant to be more books in this sequence, so maybe this isn't the story where he dies heroically shutting the hatch... But it's coming.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.