I picked up Downbelow Station a few years ago at the library and didn’t finish it. I picked it up from Amazon one day when it was on sale, and I loved it. It was, I realized, the font in the library edition. It was a BEAUTIFUL, delicate, serif font … and it was so faint where the weight narrowed on the curves it was hard to read, especially on the slightly yellowed paper of the older book. At least for my 50+ year old eyes. So three cheers for eReaders and the ability to change the font, the font size, and the background color. This book wasn’t one that I devoured, like some of the Foreigner series, but it was one I kept coming back to night after night. The characters were just so real I couldn’t abandon them.

The plot was exactly what it says on the tin: there is a breakdown in Earth’s expansion into space as the people in space—the people in stations, the people on worlds, and the people in the merchant and “navy” fleets that tie them all together—develop different cultures. A completely unnecessary and predictable war breaks out, and atrocities and heroism both happen. C.J. Cherryh isn’t afraid to let bad things happen to good people, and I wasn’t sure who was going to make it out alive, and didn’t count on the directions that certain characters took … but every move they took made sense.

There is action, but this is very much a drama of the psychological, political, and familial variety.

I do believe that sci-fi that takes place in space is motivated by humanity’s desire to expand outward to the stars, and it’s our way of psychologically preparing for it. We are a species that likes to roam, and maybe needs to. Downbelow Station is a beautiful addition to this preparedness—which is maybe why it won the Hugo. Highly recommended.

Besides Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia the ebook is on Apple, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay

The audiobook is available on Audible. Everand features an audiobook with sound effects—I might get it!