1. The book begins with mining partners Bird and Ben stumbling across a distress signal in their Company assigned sector of the solar system’s asteroid belt. Obviously, because so much book comes after this first chapter, they don’t find something simple. Entering a ship identical to their standard, ubiquitous mining craft, they find a man named Dekker—not the only cyber-punk pun in here. Dekker’s physical state requires medical intervention and a quick trip back to home base, Refinery 2. While heading back, they realize Dekker is psychologically broken. Dekker has floated for 71 days with minimal life support after his partner and lover died on a space-walk. Dekker is convinced Cory was run down by another ship, a Driver who was trying to jump their claim. Ben responds to Dekker negatively, taking a typical Belter attitude towards something perceived as inefficient—insanity, in Dekker’s case—and trying to either stop it legally or dispose of it illegally. The inefficiency is what the problem is to Ben, and he sees Dekker's insanity as simply that. At the same time, he convinces himself Dekker’s ship will become his and Bird’s valuable salvage. Bird, being a blue-skyer, a human from earth, responds positively to Dekker, deciding to try and help this poor miner as much as he can. And this set-up, all in the first couple of chapters, introduces the central story elements that the rest of the novel revolves around. Dekker attempting to come back to reality and heal, Bird and Ben trying to get the salvage on his ship, Meg and Sal helping and attempting to secure the first place in line for leasing the potential new ship, and the political intrigue of this very messy situation with the Company, the proto-Mazianni military using the mined materials to build their carriers, the other freelance miners and Shepherds agitating for better conditions and pay, and the diverse political scene within the solar system. Throughout the novel, everybody is piecing together what happened to Dekker, even Dekker, and figuring out how to use his situation to get the Company to screw its employees less. Every chapter or so, Cherryh repeats Dekker’s basic situation and adds a little each time, expanding upon the basic personal trouble of the first couple of chapters to include the wider political context. And as strong as this tactic worked in Merchanter’s Luck, it works brilliantly here. I think it works better because of two reasons: the political context is much wider and more foundational to what the reader probably already knows from other novels, though it is still very much behind the scenes; and the addition of a honest-to-God earthman, Bird, gives the reader a familiar face, a point of reference to understand the rest from. Bird is extremely useful to the reader in this role, especially with Cherryh's tightly focused voice.
2. Kind of like Bet Yeager in Rimrunners, Bird, Ben, Sal, Meg, and Dekker are low-life freelancers, similar to gold miners during the gold rushes. They enjoy dark bars and dangerous living. They're skirting the law and trying to get rich. Where Bet was an ex-soldier, these are career miners. Sal, Dekker, Ben, and Cory want out, want a better life eventually, but while they are in, they embrace the low-lifestyle of the almost criminal underground.
—But the politics, mostly behind the scenes, keep poking influences into their lives. The Shepherds are using Dekker’s situation to try and strongarm the Company into making their employees’ lives better, and they're doing it through Sal, who wants to be a Shepherd. The military uses it as an excuse to take over the Company and restructure it to more efficiently give them the materials they need to build Mazian's fleet. The Company tries to keep it quiet and cover it all up to keep the status quo and their power. All of these influences drive the central five characters in the story, forcing them into situations and repercussions that are unforeseen by these people at the bottom of this chain of command.
—Like Cherryh typically does, the novel matches the story of these characters through word choices which embrace space mining shorthand, scenes which require the characters to respond in ways that only criminals and revolutionaries would, and their ignorance about the political currents which are driving their lives. This tactic of conforming the story and writing to the characters really works wonderfully to make a rigorous and interesting novel. But it also leaves big elements all-but-out of the novel: like the characters, the reader is confused about why certain things are happening until all is revealed in the final chapter.
3. Cherryh utilizes a variety of voices in this novel to define certain classes of people. Meg is a revolutionary and is always deprecating the Company. The miners are no friend of the Company, but they’re more understanding than Meg. Sal and Ben are scientists and end up being more cut-and-dry, talking statistics and logic. The doctors and orderlies have bedside manners that don’t quite communicate clearly. And each smaller group—military, security, traffic control, corp-rats, shepherds—has distinctive characteristics as well. The Corp-Rats speak in precise ways that utilize words from their operating manuals. But Cherryh’s typical tight third person voice also affects dialogue, spitting it at the reader without stopping to explain and leaving the reader to imagine the characters’ responses. This can be confusing at first, but it all eventually makes sense as the characters mull over their situations and explain things the reader may not have gathered at first. However, the variety of voices does help the reader define the speakers in the novel very quickly and efficiently.
4. Dekker’s chapters engage in some experimental writing utilizing fractured sentences and a deeply unreliable narrator to communicate both the story and Dekker’s state of mind. This writing effectively shows and tells simultaneously. The most impressive part is the balance she draws between information and the unreliability of Dekker as narrator. She manages to both communicate and obfuscate simultaneously. It’s fantastic and strange.
5. Because the reader and miners don’t really know what’s going on until the final chapter, the pacing ends up a little slow in the novel. The reader isn’t sure what’s going on for much of the novel, so it raises the question of whether all the scenes add to the characters or story or argument or world-building. That last-chapter reveal explains most of the scenes, but I’m still left with the impression of being lost for much of the novel. For such a short novel, this isn’t too much of a negative, but it does make it drag on a bit.
6. The theme here is Bird’s helpful nature versus Ben’s selfish one. Neither are perfect, but the combination is effective. It’s a microcosm of the political changes the solar system is undergoing at the time, within the story. But it’s applicable to the reader as well, as each of us needs to find our own balance between trying to help or protect oneself to the extent of the law, and allowing forgiveness and helpfulness to temper our actions and open us up to vulnerabilities or to an unrealistically optimistic and trusting way of life. It’s clear that understanding reality is important, but Ben is constantly unsure whether Bird has his head in the clouds or is acting in a safe way among the Belters. Bird’s natural helpfulness is not a problem only when it is tempered by reality, and Ben brings that tempering influence in order to make the whole partnership work well. Similarly, Ben relies too much on the laws and bureaucracy to be a well-liked member of society, but his association with the well-liked Bird helps him overcome this. Together, both will live longer in the Belt than either would being in a partnership with somebody who agrees with them.
7. There is no intro-info-dump here, but the last chapter reveal is moderately annoying—as it is in comic books. In order to avoid it, Cherryh could have spent a lot more words on this story, including characters from other stratas of this society to show the political influences more clearly and keep the reader tracking closer to the plot. But that would have demolished the meandering tone of the novel that, as slow and frustrating as it is, effectively communicates what the life of a space miner on three month shore-leave, known as Heavy Time for the influence of gravity, would be like. I haven’t really seen her try this meandering style of storytelling before, so it’s fun seeing her try something new. I like this novel, but it’s not her best. I think she found the breaking point for her voice where not enough is on-screen to really keep the plot moving. The novel stands on its own well, but by having read some of the others in this series that take place after this novel, this novel is also a fascinating look into a part of the story I hadn't come across yet. Good stuff, not great.
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