- Hardcover: 279 pages
- Publisher: Thorndike Press; Lrg edition (April 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0786241373
- ISBN-13: 978-0786241378
- Product Dimensions: 22.1 x 14.7 x 3.2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,253,021 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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18 reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Complex characters and a lively realistic plot
18 May 1999
Format:Paperback
This is a must read book for those that like to think about what kind of cultures could develop in the future as humans expand into outer space. The book dicusses the hardships of a family ship raided by space pirates. The one survivor tries to keep his family memories alive by aligning himself with one of the major merchant powers. The book also gives the other side of the story from the eyes of the corporate family. It gives a realistic feel of what it may be like to live in a corprate ship with long lived family members.
The book also gives the reader with a dream he or she can identify: "To be free but to live your traditions."
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Cherryh's early stuff is still her best . . .
9 July 2003
Format:Paperback
Carolyn Cherryh has the true storyteller's knack of being able to approach a huge, sprawling, complexly plotted yarn in terms of its constituent characters and events. But where _Downbelow Station_ -- which you really ought to have read in order to grasp all the back-story and milieu of this future -- is a tangled skein, _Merchanter's Luck_ is a single twist of two threads. Sandor Kreja is the only surviving member of the trading family that operated and lived aboard LUCY, a down-at-the-heels merchant ship not unlike a tramp steamer, carrying small cargoes and unfussy passengers and getting by on the margins of life. Allison Reilly, on the other hand, is a promising member of the large, wealthy mercantile family that inhabits DUBLIN AGAIN, a name to be reckoned with and respected among the stations whose ports it frequents. But that's just the problem: The Reilly family is *too* large. Allison is likely to be on rejuv herself by the time she climbs the advancement ladder far enough to be able to sit the bridge. They meet happenstantially, Sandy is completely taken with the tall, beautiful, regal Allie, and when DUBLIN goes off to Pell on the next leg of her trading loop among the stations, he pilots LUCY through a series of jumps singlehandedly in order to follow her. One thing leads to another, and when his past, checkered like that of all marginers, leads to potential major troubles with the Alliance and with the ominous Captain Mallory of the warship NORWAY (a shivver-provoking force in _Downbelow Station_), Allie jumps in to help him -- and, not incidentally, herself -- by leaving her family with a few like-minded cousins and making a crew for LUCY. But now, Sandor has to learn to trust others with his ship and its ghosts, and the Dubliners have to learn to trust someone who's not one of them. Cherryh is also expert at divulging her characters' minds and motivations through telling detail, so everyone you'll meet here is fully realized. And their story becomes the kind of tale merchanters, and even stationers, will tell each other for many years in the portside bars of Pell and Viking.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Hard sf with characters you can care about!
4 May 2000
Format:Paperback
What a gem of a book MERCHANTER'S LUCK turned out to be. It's short and it packs an emotional punch. At its heart, the book is about trust. How do you know when to trust someone? What can it cost you? Set in Cherryh's brilliantly rendered universe, it can cost you your life and your very heart and soul. The universe feels lived in and the characters all ring so true you'd swear they were real (in spite of the fact that they are cruising the galaxy in spaceships!). People who complain that hard science fiction is only about ideas and never gives you characters you can care about have clearly not read C.J. Cherryh. She gives you both and by doing so, her books transcend the genre.
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