Rimrunners

The Company Wars #3

by C.J. Cherryh

Loki is a mercenary ship and bounty hunter. Bet Yeager is a killer elite Earth Company Marine whose side lost. Now she is forced to escape aboard Loki, surrounded by enemies and hunting her old comrades. And the fighting skills she must use to survive may be her death warrant.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Space

280 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1989

About the author

Currently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J. Cherryh has won four Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. She is the author of more than forty novels. Her hobbies include travel, photography, reef culture, Mariners baseball, and, a late passion, figure skating: she intends to compete in the adult USFSA track. She began with the modest ambition to learn to skate backwards and now is working on jumps. She sketches, occasionally, cooks fairly well, and hates house work; she loves the outdoors, animals wild and tame, is a hobbyist geologist, adores dinosaurs, and has academic specialties in Roman constitutional law and bronze age Greek ethnography. She has written science fiction since she was ten, spent ten years of her life teaching Latin and Ancient History on the high school level, before retiring to full time writing, and now does not have enough hours in the day to pursue all her interests. Her studies include planetary geology, weather systems, and natural and man-made catastrophes, civilizations, and cosmology…in fact, there's very little that doesn't interest her. A loom is gathering dust and needs rethreading, a wooden ship model awaits construction, and the cats demand their own time much more urgently. She works constantly, researches mostly on the internet, and has books stacked up and waiting to be written.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again, I found myself fully absorbed and fascinated by the astonishingly confident writing of CJ Cherryh. Her ability to create a sense of place and fill it to bursting with an alive depiction of its cultural dynamics — in this case, a rundown space station and the lower decks of a ship — is unparalleled. And her skill at populating these places with wonderfully human, flawed, haunted characters is what has made her one of my favorite authors to read.

As usual, she plunges headlong into her story, daring her reader to keep up, as details and motivations are alluded to but rarely signposted, and which makes reading her work all the more rewarding.

This took so long for me to read only because I have been in the midst of a bananas time — opening a show while also helping to raise a baby. I’m very glad I have more of this brilliant author’s works to read.

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favourite Cherryh book, but I still liked it. She has an uncanny knack for exploring aspects of the future that wouldn’t occur to me. Like this book—what happens when you’re a spacer and you lose your job and become homeless? Is it possible to conceal your identity in such an advanced society? Considering that this book was written in the 1980s, when it was considerably easier to take on a new identity, it would be interesting to read something along the same lines written in this century. It would seem to me to be almost impossible to disappear today, though I understand that there are books which give instruction on how to do that—erasing traces of yourself, both physical and electronic.

Bet Yeager is a difficult woman to relate to, but despite that I found myself rooting for her, especially as she started making connections with the people around her, despite herself. Funny how friendship can change the shape of a life, pushing people in different directions than they would normally go.

Rimrunners is a tribute to the power of personal connections to pull people out of difficult situations.

Book number 242 in my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.

[Xabi1990 · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10. Media de los 13 libros leídos de la autora : 8/10

Me llevo yo bien con la Cherry. Casi siempre entretenida de leer, me quedo con “Hermanos de tierra” o “Paladín”. Y de series la de Citeen (la de Chanur tb está bien). La chica ha ganado creo que 4 Hugos, que no es poco.
Solo me ha defraudado suyo “La puerta de Ivrel”

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid, albeit not exceptional, installment in the Union/Alliance universe series. Rimrunners is set shortly after the Merchant Alliance arose from the Union/Company wars. The Alliance, based on Pell station, may be at peace with the Union, but the old Company fleet (outside of one carrier ship which 'defected' to the Alliance) is still at large, supplying themselves by hook and crook. This story centers on Bet, a former Company fleet marine who was stranded on Pell station at the end of the war.

Bet, after a stint on a freighter, is now on lonely Thule station; which once served the 'sublighters' out of Earth but is now basically a relic without much of a future. Your enjoyment of Rimrunners will largely depend on your assessment of Bet as this is a character driven story for the most part. Bet wants to be crew of a ship; she is a spacer to the core. Yet, more than a year has passed on Thule and the few ships that stop by do not need more crew. Finally, a ship comes in that will take her, but it is a 'rimrunner'. Rimrunners basically acted/act as 'spooks' for the Alliance, lurking around deep space looking for signs of the Company fleet. So, in effect, she finds herself on the opposite side-- once fleet, now Alliance.

Bet is about late thirties objectively and worked as a marine for 20 years with fleet. When, after some series trials and tribulations, she finally boards the spook ship Loki, she quickly befriends (and beds) an oddball named NG ('no good') who works in engineering. Something odd is going on in the ship from the top down and it seems like several of the crew are lining up behind certain officers on board. Will there be a mutiny? Lots of puzzles to sort out and Bet, with her stiff upper lip (and easy disposition if you can take a hint) tries to sort it. Good stuff, but really a 'side' novel in the Alliance/Union universe. Good stuff! 3 stars.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this!

Gritty, rough, fast paced, superbly envisioned view of military "grunts in space" - engineers, officers, a secret mission and an old hand on the edge. I really cared about Bet and NG, struggling in different ways to be whole. A great read, short but dense with action and feeling.

#3 in the Union-Alliance universe.


For Cherryh, the Alliance-Union universe books are (mostly) fantastic -
* In order to read:

Downbelow Station (1981) - Superb!!
Merchanter's Luck (1982) - Perhaps her best ever!
Rimrunners (1989) – Very good!
Heavy Time (1991) - good, but long winded
Hellburner (1992) - good, but long winded
Tripoint (1994) - very good
Finity's End (1997) – Superb
Forty Thousand in Gehenna (1983) - good but uneven, important for Cyteen and Regenesis
Cyteen (1988) – Superb
Regenesis (2009) - Superb

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bet Yeager, slowly starving to death dockside on Thule Station -- she had been running hired crew on a merchanter, but they had to let her go; and now she's trying to just survive until she can get another ship berth. But ships are few and far between on Thule (one of the old Hinder Stars stations, newly reactivated after the end of the Company Wars, and about to be scuttled because discovery of a new mass point has made Thule unnecessary as a stepping-stone between Earth and Pell, and because nobody wants to leave an entire station around for Mazian and his fleet of now-pirates to use as a base of operations); and after run-ins with a couple of Thule men have ended ... badly, and with bodies (not, to be sure, that they didn't have it coming), she's just desperate enough to try for a berth on the Alliance ship Loki (although Bet's deepest, most closely-held secret is that she was actually part of the Mazianni fleet, a marine aboard one of Mazian's carriers until she got left behind when the Fleet fled Pell at the end of Downbelow Station), despite the fact that Loki is giving off a seriously hinky vibe -- once you're crew on this ship, you're going to stay crew on this ship, at least unless you give them cause to put you in an airlock without a pressure suit ...

So Bet finds herself thrust into inter-crew politics and rivalries just as cutthroat as the recently-ended War itself, and finds herself hooking up with one NG Ramey (one of Cherryh's patented deeply damaged characters) despite being warned away from him pretty much from the get-go; and Loki is out doing Loki's business the whole time, but nobody will tell her exactly what that business is ...

Another excellent, tense adventure from Cherryh, this one leaning almost into MilSF territory.

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark, gritty, claustrophobic, and, as any Cherryh novel, extremely immersive. This one is quite short and has a more narrow focus (think Merchanter's Luck). A different place, post Company Wars, a different side of things. Themes of loyalty, belonging, identity, trauma, survival. 4.5 stars.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alas, not the gushing love that I had for Merchanter's Luck (I'm still saying it: every sci fi fan go read that book!!). I'm still in love with CJ Cherryh's worldbuilding and ambience and gritty details -- with the hard-scrabble existence of her Company Wars series, which always circles around damaged misfits finding a place to belong, and everyday people caught between the teeth of a conflict bigger than them, trying to piece together some sort of life in the ashes of a war.

This one also starts noirish, with Elizabeth Yeager's absolutely down-on-her-luck struggle to survive on a decaying space station, and eventually needing to cover up a murrrrder. I absolutely loved the first third of the book or so, and I deeply enjoyed the last few chapters of the climax (manohmanohman her cooperating with that particular character was amazing, and I could have read their tense by-play and grudgingly respectful dynamic forever, it was wonderful).

Unfortunately, I pretty much hated everything in-between, and it all boils down to NG Ramey and his entire storyline & romance with Bet taking over the plot. I can't quite sort out my opinions about it: I think there's a progressive inversion of usual tropes here, what with Bet as a worn-down 37-year-old female lead who's also unabashedly casual about sex. It's no big deal, she takes it without shame as just a fun way to pass time with her shipmates -- and she also aggressively pursues NG, who is aloof, standoffish, damaged. He keeps trying to say no to her and her stubborn attempts to wheedle her way closer to him. Unfortunately, it just really rubbed me the wrong way? Because if the shoe had been on the other foot, if Bet had been male, then this would 100% have read as sexually harassing him, always putting her hands on him when he was loudly, vocally, and physically saying 'no', and when her approaches were clearly triggering his PTSD. Her smartass attitude got on my nerves, too, when she purposefully antagonised her enemies and made her situation so much harder for herself. I found myself missing careful, pragmatic Allison Reilly from Merchanter's Luck, compared to the loose cannon that was Bet.

And the middle of the book devolves into that endless back-and-forthing, with Bet trying to get closer to NG and him shaking her off; the pacing is completely shot, as most of the conflict kept rehashing "Protecting NG", when I would much rather have read about the ship's activities and missions, the actual plot, rather than the drama Bet was instigating and escalating.

I get that the point was supposed to be the importance of friendship & teammates in the great lonely big nothing, but in which case, I feel like this book would've really, really benefited from splitting chapter POVs between Bet/NG -- like Sandor/Allison in Merchanter's Luck -- because NG remains such a completely ineffable enigma that even by the end I couldn't get a good read on him. Most of his dialogue was just repetitions on "The hell" or "The hell with you" or "No!", so I have no idea what to make of him, and didn't like him very much by the end, which makes Bet's love for him baffling to me. I'm also bothered by Bet still defaulting to calling him "NG" (which is the nickname 'No Good', unpleasantly foisted upon him by an unfriendly crew), when insisting on calling him Ramey and her succeeding in renaming him amongst the crew would've been a nice symbolic gesture.

I also put this on one of my trigger warning shelves, because due to Bet's really precarious position at the start of the novel, the first few chapters walk the line of sexual assault a lot.

Anyway, final verdict: 2.5 stars, rounded up for the beginning and the end, but docked for all the pacing problems in the middle. I still love rolling around in Cherryh's worldbuilding and life on these ships, though. Onwards to Tripoint!

(& last semi-spoilery gripe: I wish we'd ever found out what the beef was between Orsino & Fitch. It might not be super-significant in the long run -- playing more into those themes of innocents caught in a game being played out above them -- but since there were no other real reveals or twists along the way, I just would've appreciated there being more to learn about the context of this ship power struggle.)

[Alex Bright · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded down for the repetitiveness and the fact that some of the characters and relationships didn’t quite ring true. Still a good story.

[prcardi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Storyline: 2/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 2/5
World: 2/5

I finally figured out what it is about C.J. Cherryh books that bothers me. She nags. When she wants you to understand an element of her worldbuilding or character development, she pesters you with reminders. To show concern on the behalf of one character toward another, we'll get some internal monologue of the type, "I wonder if he's okay?" Then, the main character will run into a common friend and ask, "Is he all right?" Cherryh is a good enough writer to keep it varied, not permitting us to guess the form of the next inquiry or contact. Thus in the following interaction the protagonist will seek out the character of concern, and "put a comforting hand on his shoulder" or "look at him with concern". This might all happen on a single page. And if it were only that page, then it wouldn't be so bad; we could pass it off as a intense worry of one over another. But Cherryh seems to think that this is both character-building and a source of drama. So these reminders will happen scores of times across a chapter and hundreds of times throughout the book. Cherryh either doesn't trust her readers to pick up on cues or doesn't know how else to fill the story. I would have understood and enjoyed the book better, however, with one hundredth of the cues.

This third-in-the-series Company Wars book is a lot like the second-in-the-series. The plot is minuscule. I imagine Cherryh telling her publisher or editor the basic plotline and the response being, "That's it?" Others would cover it in a chapter or a prologue, but Cherryh works to get a lot out of a very little. Thus the Company Wars series inches along here, covering an event that could have been mentioned in a sentence in one of the other two books without any real loss to the series.

I thought that the first book of the series, Downbelow Station, was overly repetitious and remarkably similar to her Chanur series. The second, Merchanter's Luck, only had about 20% new material for a reader who had read Cherryh's other works. Rimrunners has a little bit more to offer, say about 40% new material. Chanur and The Company Wars to this point are all the same - the angst involved in being in a space station or a player in space battles. Cherryh's angle seems to be to show you that the life is neither glorious nor adventurous but a trudgery of wearying daily life tedium. What new she added to this was about ship-board sex life. This hasn't been a big element of her previous books, and I tried to treat it as a statement about something. I never figured it out. I thought perhaps there might be a free love point, a feminist empowerment angle, a gender equality lesson, something...anything. But the main character at times seems to hold herself above using sex as a form of capital. Only later, she would use it exactly as a commodity to be bartered for other goods. Sometimes sleeping around was treated as something that would give her a bad reputation and which she worried over, and then other times sleeping around was entirely normal and expected. Male and female crew showered in the same rooms and had little privacy, the point seeming to be that there was nothing erotic about nudity. Other times the guys would catcall and cheer when she took her shirt off. I would never have suggested or been drawn to a book whose main worldbuilding was the sexual mores among spacers, but once Cherryh set up that as a goal, I expected her to put together a world that had its own internal logic and consistency or to at least make a clear statement. She didn't.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breathlessly paced, this is a great piece of MilSciFi based in Cherryh’s incredibly consistent and detailed Alliance-Union universe. Liz Yeager is a great protagonist: a grrl mechanic, spy, and all-around badass. She makes friends and enemies, but she always leaves a strong impression on other characters (and the reader). I thought the descriptions of blue collar work on ships and stations in various levels of g were so realistic. I am sure that major part of Naomi’s character in The Expanse (and maybe a tiny bit of Drummer) was taken from the gritty, take no shit attitude of our protagonist. One of my favorite of her novels so far! The one pity is that none of her novels carry over somewhat minor characters as Yeager because it would have been cool to see her show up somewhere else on Pell or Downbelow!

[Maggie K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another company gem! Bet Yeager is a marine stranded on an obscure outpost, and in desperation signs on to the Loki-a spy ship chasing after some of her former comrades. If Bet wants to live, she needs to fit in, and fast.
This edition brings forth various forms of friendship and loyalty, with a good variety of shipmates working toward a very action-packed finale that works. I totally enjoyed this one!

[Kelly Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know. I know. Bookshelves groan with kick-ass heroines these days. But I haven't found one who works better for me than Bet. Set in CJ Cherryh's Alliance-Union Universe; it's about survival, reinvention and the forging of family.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is something of an unusual book for Cherryh. Her viewpoint characters tend to be intelligent, somewhat highly strung, and to try to use logic to navigate through their problems. Here, she gives us Bet Yeager. While Bet is certainly not stupid, she operates more on guts or instinct and determination than thought. You will frequently find Bet described as a strong woman or female character. "Strong female character" and "strong woman" are terms that get thrown around a lot in SF/F reviews, and I find them to be problematic. Mostly because they seem to be applied to young and attractive women who kick ass and take names, without any consideration of other female or feminine norms, or whether there are other kinds of strength.

Jo Walton has noted that "More than anybody else, Cherryh has thought about what it would mean to live in space." Here, she's thinking about what it would be like to be a homeless woman on a space station. At the beginning of the book, Bet is sleeping in an out of the way restroom, using the hand soap to keep herself and her clothes clean. Later on, a man barges in, intent on having sex with her. And even though she could have fought him off, she doesn't, because she is so down on her luck that she barely cares (though she is hardly interested), and if she doesn't give him a hard time she might benefit from it afterwards.

Please note that I'm not being judgmental here. I think this is a realistic portrayal. As the story progresses, we see that Bet's background experiences incline her toward casual but much more clearly consensual encounters. I'm not judging that either, because again, I think it's realistic and consistent with the setting and the character's background. Just noting that "strong woman" and "strong female character" tend to go with characters who, if they have sexual experiences in a story, are because of romantic feelings. Bet seems atypical of characters who get that label.

I don't think Bet is weak by any stretch of the imagination. I think she's tough as hell. But reading other reviews and seeing how often "strong" came up made me ponder that label a little bit.

Overall I'd give this a 2.5. As you can probably guess, this is not the most enjoyable of books to read. It's a lot like an extended character sketch and extended meditation on setting mixed together with a couple short stories' worth of events. Okay, maybe that's what most novels are ... but here the amalgamation is not good.

The old review, which was taken from a brief summing up of the lesser Alliance-Union novels, and so general as to be wrong: Worth reading if you want to see what's happening in certain populations after Downbelow Station, and to see brief cameos by major characters from that book. (There are no cameos from Downbelow Station characters here. James Robert Neihart from Finity's End and Signy Mallory are mentioned, but don't actually appear.)

[Samantha (AK) · Rating 2 out of 5]

So this one was disappointing.

What do you do if you’re homeless, unemployed, and without identification papers on a space station? Elizabeth ‘Bet’ Yeager has been fighting that life for over a year, and her luck’s about to run out. Stationside is starting to feel a bit tight, and jumping ship lands her in even more hot water.

It should have been great, but Cherryh’s usual brisk prose has narrowed to machine-gun fragments here, and the thin plot doesn’t help.

As for Bet herself… I’m deeply conflicted. She’s tough, and she knows what she’s about, but she has serious personal issues. The woman careens from escaping sexual assault, to dub-con sex-for-security (transaction), to consensual & mutually-enjoyable sex with someone she likes, to sex-as-favor (transaction) with someone she doesn’t like but still has a good time with. It would be easier to parse if she could keep a consistent psychology around it, but she can’t seem to decide if she’s okay with the transactional sex she’s having or not. Thankfully, it’s not detailed, but it does leave me feeling a squicked.

It is, however, a strikingly different perspective than what we saw in Downbelow or Merchanter’s Luck, whose Merchanter women had most of the power in their sleepovers, or even than what we saw from Meg and Sal in Heavy Time / Hellburner. The latter, of course, we only experience in the context of their male counterparts, but maybe Cherryh was trying to use Bet to explore the darker sides of her sexually liberated society? I’m not sure if that’s giving it too much credit.

Additionally, once aboard Loki, Bet immediately latches onto her damaged crewmate, “NG” Ramey. NG is seriously traumatized, unpredictable, and NOT popular with the crew. For some reason, Bet decides that this guy (who gives her the creeps right off) is A.) Friends-with-benefits material, and B.) Her new pet project. The mental monologue that runs through most of the books is “This poor dude... but he’s crazy-traumatized… he might be dangerous… he’s also hot for some reason… let’s all just sit on him so he doesn’t do anything stupid… hold up now nobody hurts my crewmate… he’s so sad… etc.”

It gets tiring. Like Decker, but 100x worse.

And then there’s the ending. By now, I’m gotten used to the way Cherryh squishes all her action into the very end of her books, but Rimrunners manages to be worse than usual. It’s approximately 260 pages of slow tension and setup, 18 pages of action, and 2 pages of “and then everyone was happy and the world moved on.” All the setup and internal tension among Loki’s crew just kind of… vanishes. Ship politics to this point? Apparently no longer relevant. That major antagonist-in-power? We got to laugh at him a couple times, but I guess he’s given up on whatever beef he had?

Granted there was some drastic action, but the happily-ever-after fluff note is a bit much to be believable. Especially since I’m really not sure who all is left alive at the end, or why it all went down the way it did, or… anyway. I have a lot of questions about the exact sequence of events in those last 20-odd pages.

I think the worst part, for me, is that Bet really is an interesting character when she’s not mooning over NG. The whole intro portion of the book on Thule was fascinating, but once Bet boarded Loki? Pfft.

If you’ve ever wondered what happened to all those marines who were left behind on Pell in Downbelow, this is worth a look. It’s not a bad book, but it’s really not a good one either. I own this one since the library doesn’t. 2*.

[Bryan Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a surprising novel.

Rimrunners takes place in CJ Cherryh's Company Wars universe, a future where humanity has started exploring and setting up colonies around nearby stars. A sprawling war breaks out between different factions as humans vie to develop new ways of living, new technologies, and ways of staying alive.

This book has a very narrow focus against that large background. Mostly we follow Bet Yeager, a machinist and veteran who tries to make her way on a mysterious and very stressed starship. We rarely leave her side and don't get a sense of the story's big picture until the past 30 pages. Instead the story is one of physical survival and emotional pressure.

The cover of the book is quite colorful and fun-looking, but the book is neither. We begin on a decrepit and dying space station, where Bet is homeless, starving, and only managing to sleep in a toilet stall. Immediately a drunk man tries to rape her. You see what I mean? Here's the -punk of cyberpunk, a sense of poverty and desperation akin to Orwell's Down and Out.

Bet manages to scheme her way onto a starship run by some intelligence entity, but we never enter a spy story. Most of the time we follow her trying to avoid being fired or injured in a very harsh working environment. Details are small, practical, and narrow: getting paid and spending money on beers, privacy curtains between crammed together bunks, casual sex, working on older machines, getting hollered at by cryptic and mean bosses. Bet loves a shipmate and spends a lot of time trying to protect him from bosses, coworkers, and himself. Here Rimrunners is nearly a proletarian novel.

At the novel's end the ship returns to the bad space station where things began, and then the action heats up and bits of the larger picture start to appear. The last few chapters give us a thumping deep space battle complete with power armor and skullduggery.

I was surprised and pleased by the proletarian and desperate nature of this novel. I'm ready for more in the series.

PS: my son's a Cherryh fan and urged this one on me. Thank you, son.

[Wesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Rimrunners' is the story of Elizabeth Yeager, a Marine with the infamous Mazianni pirate ship 'Africa.' Left behind when the Earth Company Fleet retreated from its occupation of Pell Station, Bet drifted to Thule, a dying space station in the Hinder Stars region of space near Earth. Starving and desperate she signed on the 'Loki' - an Alliance vessel tasked with hunting down her former shipmates. Aboard ship she falls in love with a younger engineer named Ramey, the ship's pariah and the brutal first officer's target of abuse. Bet is forced to make difficult decisions in order to navigate 'Loki''s complicated politics and keep herself out of the firing line.

CJ Cherryh penned an excellent 'below decks' story about those who serve in high pressure situations with no control over their lives. Bet Yeager is an interesting post-feminist character - older, world weary, abashedly unashamed about her sexuality, yet completely willing to kill a man with her bare hands.

[Juushika · Rating 4 out of 5]

The beginning--down on her luck ex-military woman negotiates unhappy sexual politics with awful men--doesn't feel much like Cherryh, or at least what I want from Cherryh. But it works in retrospect, a subtle introduction to the character and the escalating scale: from a woman alone, to the unit she forms within her new crew, to the minute scale they play in the larger conflicts in the Alliance-Union universe. The gender politics in particular develop in compelling, gratifying ways. Like everyone, I'm a sucker for a found family; but I love how Cherryh picks up these id-y, would-be feel-good tropes (like her extensive work with hurt/comfort) and makes them especially prickly, nasty, and unresolved while still leaning into the payoff. This was slow to grow on me, but grow it did; I imagine it's especially successful on reread.

[Jamie Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m working my way through Cherryh’s older books, and I liked this short novel about a stranded space marine who’s desperate to get a job aboard a spaceship - reduced to near-starvation and prostituting herself, because if she takes a station job she’ll lose her place in the hiring line.

When she finally joins a ship she immediately pairs up with its most troubled crewmember and in befriending him, gets caught up in nasty local politics.

This is set in the Company Wars universe, but can be read as a standalone novel.

[Semantic Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of Cherryh's greatest strengths is to take huge things like interplanetary conflicts, and distill them into a story on a personal level. This book follows an out-of-work mercenary just looking for a ship to call home, while around her events spiral out of control. The narrative voice is spare, blunt, and very immediate; a compelling read.

[Jacqueline J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bet is the best ever sci fi woman. She's tough, knowledgable but vulnerable and real. I love this type of story. I prefer to read about marginal minor characters not the star ship captain or the planetary ruler. This is a great look at the bowels of the ship.

[Lord Humungus · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't remember why I got this book, but I remember why I kept it: to remind myself what awful, crappy space soap opera is and why I should avoid it all costs. Hated this book and only made it to the end as some form of self punishment.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

A slow moving story about office politics set in a science fiction context.

[Michael Battaglia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good writers can so evoke an environment that you can feel as if you were there with the characters, really good writers can recreate a place so well that if you were to visit such a place in real life you'd find it was pretty close to how the writer described it, and great writers can immerse you in a made-up place so well that even though there's very little chance of you ever going through you can come away fairly convinced that if you ever did you've already been told what to expect.

In this case, I'm talking about a spaceship. Unless I get dropped into a time warp (and don't immediately get myself killed once I land in the future) or they somehow figure out how to transport my magnificent brain into a body that will last, oh, another three hundred years or so there is a very good chance that I will never serve time on a spaceship crew. And unless I missed something in her biography, I can assume that the author didn't either. But despite that seeming disadvantage she's managed to create a setting that isn't just a submarine floating in space.

Set in her usual Alliance-Union future history seemingly in the period after the events of "Downbelow Station" sent everything going haywire we're introduced to Elizabeth "Bet" Yeager, a former space marine who got separated from her ship in the chaos and has been trying to survive on a space station, which would be less stressful if her ship hadn't been on the losing side of the conflict and everyone around her on the station is throwing up W's. While posing as a jobless vagrant has its downsides it sure beats the alternative of being arrested so she tries to keep the ruse going for as long as she can until she can get work on a ship and leave, perhaps with a chance of finding her own ship.

She gets her chance by signing onto the Alliance ship Loki, although not before things go haywire back at the station and giving her new crewmates a bad first impression. Now all she has to do is establish herself among the crew, navigate the various rivalries and alliances and not piss off the officers in the process, all the while never letting on her former Union marine status. In other words, a typical day at a suburban high school.

Given how short the book is (less than three hundred pages) if she did anything but only follow Bet throughout the novel the plot might come across as diluted (and this is what I think brings her last book I read "Heavy Time" down a notch) but using the very narrow third person perspective that she's so good at she adds a gritty intensity to a situation that could be boiled down to a girl just trying to make some friends.

Cherryh seems to excel in pressure cooker, claustrophobic situation and you can't get more claustrophobic than a spaceship in transit. She captures the closed in feel, how friendships and enemies can develop at the drop of a hat and how everyone is seconds away from a violence they can't afford since everyone on the ship depends on everyone else doing their job properly. Since Bet is no stranger to serving on ships she's able to hold her own but when she befriends the ship outcast it leads to a series of increasingly tense encounters that can only be described as "playing with fire" in the same as the Arctic being described as a pile of ice cubes.

Its Bet's navigation of the tension that makes the book so exhilarating as Cherryh captures with all the sweaty intensity what the social environment would feel like on a ship like this, where everyone is weighing everyone else, where you can cause trouble without causing trouble and where beating the crap out of someone in the showers can be explained as an accident and everyone goes along with it because the message is sent. She gets the rhythms of life on board and how it affects everyone down to the language, with every word chosen for maximum effect, both for what you want to say and what you want them to remember. For Bet it becomes a chess game where the only winning is survival, both for her and her friends. In Bet she has one of her best characters, capable of knowing when she's screwed up, not afraid to ask for help but more than able to take matters into her own hands. Its watching her engage in the complex dance of words and actions and the meanings of both with the rest of the crew that fascinates throughout as she has to decide when to keep her head down and when to be tough and the wrong decision can get her ejected from the ship while its still in space.

If the book has any flaws its that by focusing purely on Bet and her immediate problems, Cherryh's usual tactic of having the whole sociopolitical world outside the ship forging boldly onward becomes too opaque. She's a writer where background is essential and if I didn't reread the summary for "Downbelow Station" on a lark before reading this book a lot of the context would have been lost on me. The ship and its dramas are intense but also somewhat hermetically sealed so when outside trouble does start to creep in its hard to understand for a while exactly is happening. Seeing matters from Bet's point of view it makes sense but it means we're in the dark too for a good portion of the climax, diluting its impact slightly. The book also seems to end absurdly quickly as if having said what it had to say it has no desire to hang around longer.

Regardless its a worthy addition to both Cherryh's extraordinarily complex universe and military SF in general. No one else really captures the feel of what its like to be a working slob in the future who's not concerned with the big picture, until the big picture decides to forcibly insert itself into the frame.

[Mely]

2024 reread.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite from Cherryh but all around a solid read in the Alliance-Union universe. Torn between 3 and 4 stars.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

”You any good?” a man asked, one of the ones standing.
“Damn good.”
Any way you want to take it, man.

C.J. Cherryh’s Rimrunners is set in the same universe as her Hugo winning novels Downbelow Station and Cyteen, told from the perspective of a young woman with a dark military past trying to find redemption and community by escaping a backwater space station where she has been abandoned. The novel provides little exposition on how this universe is structured, so that this novel cannot really stand independently. The background conflict hinges on understanding the politics and events within Downbelow Station. Unfortunately, while Downbelow Station is a riveting read, this one is a bit more pedestrian.

Like Cyteen, this novel is more interested in characters and ideas than science fiction hardware. Bet Yeager, our protagonist, wanders the seamy side of Space Station Thule and the Starship Loki, hoping to re-establish a family which would possess similar characteristics of her past military life but without constant murder, betrayal, and mayhem. Her interior dialogue is repetitive, and the pacing in the middle of this rather short novel is too slow. To compound the issue of pacing is my confusion as to what exactly is happening and how it affects Yeager. Cherryh conveys critical information through dialogue, and often, as a reader, I was confused why a conversation struck fear into Yeager or provided hope. Fortunately, the final third ties everything together and provides a rather enjoyable science fiction military skirmish with enhanced body armor.

Cherryh’s writing is unique, possessing attributes of science fiction space opera while retaining a literary focus on character. It’s a mixed but satisfying read. While definitely not one of her best novels set in this universe, this one is still a welcome addition. It possesses an interesting universe and style whose influence can be seen in Becky Chambers’ Wayfarer Series as well as James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series (in fact, there is little difference between Bet Yeager and the televised version of Martian Marine Gunnery Sergeant Bobbie Draper).

Pick up a used copy when you find one at your local library’s sale.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

After finishing Merchanter's Luck, I was interested to see how Rimrunners would turn out. Bet Yeager is a really different character and I found myself rooting for her right from the beginning. She is a former Mazian marine that ends up on Thule after the disastrous events occurring at Pell Station in Downbelow Station. She is tough and determined, full of pride - pride that is starting to wear down, after many homeless nights and scarce food. She ends up on the merchanter ship Loki, an odd ship that doesn't have the typical family crew. The story continues her relationship with the crew and the events that unfold over Loki's true intentions.

I would recommend this book to someone who is looking for a sci-fi set in space on a ship that is more focused on character interaction and social situations rather than action.

My biggest issue with Rimrunners is that is doesn't read like a developed story. It is more like a very long short story. Much of the plot is focused on Bet and NG, the latter being a character I never really understood, and I often found him annoying. However, I thought it was interesting that Bet was immediately attracted to the outcast. Although at the very end some intriguing events play out, the middle is a lot of fluff, and makes you wonder what Cherryh was getting at. However, I enjoy Cherryh's excellent character development, and her take on social interactions. As I mentioned before, NG was an enigma to me. Did he have some sort of PTSD of some sort? Anxiety attacks? Cherryh always has been quite elusive to giving all the details.

I would like to see Bet in some future stories. Particularly ones with a stronger plot more in terms of Downbelow Station.

[Annise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rimrunners is a very character-driven SF story, about Bet Yeager, a spacer with a mysterious past, who joins the equally mysterious ship Loki. She quickly finds that the Loki has a difficult crew. As she forms bonds with a few of them, she also has to deal with antagonism from its officers, and the story follows her trying to navigate a complicated political situation without getting her and her new friends hurt. Mostly told in very tight third-person from Bet's point of view, I absolutely loved the voice of the narrative. The story was tense and exciting, and I found myself hooked into the world and, after a while, so unable to put the book down that I read it again almost as soon as I'd finished. Having said that, it's still hard to pinpoint exactly why I loved it so much, but in general I think I just immensely enjoyed the characters and their interactions. As that was the entire driver of the book, I was definitely its target audience.

The prologue was an abstract history of the story universe, and, I felt, a bit of a misstep, as I got enough of a feel for the events from the narrative to build the world without having the info-dump at the start. Similarly, Bet is first introduced from another character's point of view, while the rest of the novel is exclusively in hers. This works, as it gave you an external impression of Bet before getting to know her more personally, but it meant that (first time through) I took a few chapters to get into the story and the character. However, once I did, I was enthralled. This was my first CJ Cherryh book, but I will definitely be looking out others in future.

[C.C. Yager · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend who loves C. J. Cherryh's books urged me to read this one. She told me it would be a good introduction to Cherryh's writing. Wow. Wow. Wow.

First of all, point of view. She writes in third omniscient but spends nearly the entire story in the main character's head. That character, Bet Yeager, is a Marine stuck on a space station and trying to get back to her ship and friends. The first few chapters in Bet's mind are harrowing -- she's slowly starving because she can't find work to earn creds to buy food and she can't find work because she's not exactly legal on the space station. To go through this experience in Bet's POV is uncomfortable and tense. In fact, Cherryh did an excellent job of keeping the tension ratcheted up to the very end. So good, in fact, I almost didn't believe it was the end when I got there! (smile)

Bet Yeager informs the reader of the culture, her environment, and her times. She's a rough personality, used to living tough and fighting. Her world is totally plausible. Cherryh's world-building skills are exemplary.

My one issue with this book deals with description. Perhaps my lack of experience with video games or hard sci fi is the culprit, but I was dissatisfied with the sketchy description, especially when it came to important things like the physical environment or the "rigs" that Bet works on toward the end. Cherryh describes action and process but not physical appearance very much. I suppose this is consistent with Bet's POV, but I sure wished she noticed more. I wanted more, and I'm usually not one to ask for more description.

All in all, I'd recommend this book! An intense and riveting read.