1. What a tour de force! This novel is Cherryh sticking to what she does best—not ignoring any experimentation, but slightly modifying what she does well: an opening to introduce the characters, set the context, and get the story rolling in a quick, engaging way; deep introspection throughout for Fletcher, a slightly damaged main character trying to come to terms with a new situation; a supporting cast of actual characters who have their own philosophical insights, instead of being set-piece-characters; illuminating a central act through spaced out near-repetition of it, adding more to the reader's understanding each time; believable change within the characters that could only come from what happened within the novel; word choices and sentence structures modifying to fit the factions within the story; pacing that allows both rumination and action; and that wonderful, tightly focused voice that never allows the author to spoon feed the reader. In the rest of the Company Wars novels, Cherryh explores and focuses on some of these things, and here all that work pays off in a novel that clearly demonstrates a refinement and perfection of her skills. I just have one small complaint.
2. That ending is too pat, too tied up, too tidy. Sure, the Hisa stick is no deus ex machina—it has significant other importance to Fletcher, James Robert Sr, James Robert Jr, Jeremy, Satin, Elene Quen, and the whole of the ship Finity’s End throughout the novel. It’s final importance to the Alliance is being unveiled slowly as Fletcher matures and thinks his way through his past—so it’s no deus ex machina. But when Fletcher decides to search for the stick at the importers, I feel this is going to be a typical Cherryh ending: part tragedy, part triumph, all interesting puzzle to roll over in my mind for a few days after. In the end, it feels like the cost didn’t measure up to the victory gained. Sure, Fletcher being put in his place regarding Jeremy is a big change, but because he’s already gone through that—with his mother, Pell Station, Patch, Melody, Satin and the whole downer culture, Downbelow Station, Bianca, the rest of the crew, and his last foster family—this latest break isn’t a surprise, it’s a repetition. Things are different now in the sense that Fletcher is accepting the ship, with all its faults, with Jeremy’s actions, and more importantly with his own actions. But just explaining the ending in a minute to somebody makes the novel seem like a happy-ending too pat for any interesting thoughts. Thinking about it more and more, I realize that it isn’t, but it does come off that way. Cherryh could have better illuminated the cost to Fletcher at the end, and I think that would have helped. As the novel slowly pieces itself together in my mind after the fact, as events come into hindsight focus, the whole makes a lot of sense and the actual cost becomes clear, which is why this is only a small complaint.
3. Otherwise, this novel is perfect. I love it. I wish I would have written this novel. The most intriguing bit is, of course, Fletcher, the main character. This novel is Fletcher learning to look past himself and recognize reality. Even the time-dilation of the spacers points this out prominently, when Fletcher initially mistakes Jeremy for a twelve year-old. But what’s so intriguing here is that this realization of reality goes through a lot of wrong steps before Fletcher finally finds something solid to stand on. He wants to find a family, then he gets disgusted with humans and wants to work with Hisa, then he wants to change policy so he dreams of being administrator to Downbelow, etc, etc, until he realizes that he cannot stand on his own first impressions and ends up apologizing, trying to make right, and doing something good for the ship. He’s not fixed at the end, but he is on the right track finally. (In this sense, the end makes perfect sense: he finally breaks enough to be useful to others, and he is quite useful to the whole Alliance.) It’s not optimism, his desire to bring the stick before the Alliance, but it is the best in a set of bad possible decisions, and he goes about it the right way, for once. This growth, this acceptance of reality and his need to work within it, is the theme of the book, and the triumphal ending drives home Cherryh’s point successfully.
4. JR is a fascinating character. In many ways he is the foil to Fletcher within the novel. Where Fletcher is distrustful and destructive, JR is comfortable and committed. JR has it all figured out, and what he doesn’t have figured, he knows where to find. However, Fletcher’s arrival and the ship going off of a war footing, shoves him out of his comfort zone and he cannot quite find the right tactics to deal with this new aspect to his reality. Where Fletcher has trouble dealing with reality at all, JR has a hard time integrating new pieces into it, and tells himself that his caution is a virtue. He retreats to his current reality, hiding from the new of Fletcher. However, by the end, he too has grown, has changed, has taken a few steps of his own, on his own initiative, and come off fine for it. These two characters are, unlike other Cherryh novels, the only two main characters in the book. But the book doesn’t lack for that because by focusing herself down to just these two, it allows Cherryh to get deeper into their psychologies and philosophies in a worthwhile way.
5. This novel feels like the philosophical point the rest of the Company Wars novels are trying to make. All the discussions about the past come to a head here, refined. The pacing and depth are spectacular. The writing is satisfyingly varied in word choices and sentence structure. What more can I say? This is perfect.
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