Thoughts on CJ Cherryh's Heavy Time
Having loved Gate of Ivrel, I eagerly snatched up several more CJ Cherryh books from eBay. One of them was Heavy Time, part of her Company Wars sub-series in the greater Alliance-Union Universe. The third book in this sub-series, Downbelow Station won Cherryh her first Hugo, so I was excited for this.
That excitement didn’t last long. 220 pages into this 350 page science fiction-flavored xanax, even sunk cost fallacy couldn’t carry me through to the end. I rarely DNF a book, often forcing myself to keep reading even if I’m not enjoying it. Not this time. What went wrong?
For one thing, I made a mistake by reading this first. Chronologically Heavy Time is the first Company Wars book, but it wasn’t the first written. Downbelow Station came ten years before this. Wikipedia lists this book first in the sub-series, and I stupidly didn’t look at the release years. I’m not sure how much that matters since it is set before Downbelow, but I felt like I was missing context as I was reading it.
This book’s problems go far behind my chrono-confusion, though. For one thing, it moves at a glacier’s pace. Not in the sense that there’s a slow, deliberate building up of the world and characters. No, if anything, it’s the opposite. By page 220, I knew very little about the three protagonists beyond their one-note cliched personalities, much less the other characters. Most of the world was confined to a spaceship and a station, which in turn was largely confined to a bar, a bedroom, and a hospital room. Despite being set in the universe of an epic space opera, the world feels incredibly small and bland.
As for those characters, there’s Bird. He’s an old spaceship pilot who works as a junker. The book loves telling us how old he is and how experienced he is, but we never get a sense of that knowledge firsthand. His partner, Ben, is completely unlikable, a miserable man who only thinks about himself and getting ahead. We’re constantly told he’s he’s an orphan and that we should feel sorry for him, but every time he opens his mouth he says something reprehensible.
Then there’s Dekker, and this is where things get tricky. Dekker was found by Bird and Ben out in space. His ship was badly damaged, he was knocked out, and his partner, Cory, was missing, presumed dead. They pull him out, take his ship, and bring them back to the station. Along the way, Dekker is constantly screaming in panic. He’s lost his mind, freaking out, flailing around, calling out Cory’s name and for some reason constantly asking what time it is. Cherryh does a great job explaining his mental state. We slowly piece together why he’s so concerned about the time and the watch, and we see his brain ticking away, trying to figure out what day it is, but it’s so jumbled in there he can’t get a clear picture. He can’t remember exactly what happened or where Cory is, but he’s sad that she’s dead, and equally convinced she’s still alive. It’s a great look at how trauma can wreak havoc on anyone.
But it never stops. The book constantly cuts to Dekker’s POV where we’re repeatedly subjected to the same thought process. “What time is it?” “What day is it?” “What happened?” “There was another ship!” “Where’s Cory?” Those questions represent about 95% of his dialog. I understand Cherryh is trying to put us in the mind of someone who’s mind is gone, make us feel claustrophobic and uneasy, but this unending repetition is not fun, interesting, or challenging. It simply grinds the story to a halt, more interested in telling us how Dekker feels through never-ending dialog than showing us through actions.
And that’s the biggest problem I have with Heavy Time. It’s so repetitive that nothing happens. It gets off to a strong start, with Bird and Ben rescuing Dekker, arguing about whether they should effectively steal Dekker’s ship since he’s lost it and they have a legal claim. They struggle with Dekker as he tries to fight them the whole way back, unsure of where he is or where he’s being taken. It’s a tense ride.
But already that repetition kicks in after only about thirty pages. Once they strap Dekker to a wall, all momentum goes with him. Bird and Ben keep arguing about whether to try to take the ship for themselves, Ben wants to kill Dekker because he thinks he’s going to kill them, Bird is telling Ben to calm down and being gentle with Dekker, Dekker screams about the time, and Bird tells Dekker to be calm. This goes on and on for dozens of pages, nothing changing, nothing new being added. And it doesn’t matter anyway, because Ben tells the authorities they want the ship, greases some palms, takes the ship, and Bird just shrugs and says “okay.” He’s got the moral fortitude of Chuck Schumer.
Cherryh begrudgingly advances the plot eventually, with the group arriving at a space station. We’re introduced to Meg and Sol, two freelance pilots who work as prostitutes in between jobs since they don’t own their ship. They’re also friends of Bird and Ben. The women stick around because… they want the ship. They’re not trying to steal it, and they offer the two their services (as pilots) and fair pay, but they can’t afford to buy it. But later Dekker gets out of the hospital and wants his ship back, and despite Bird and Ben not yet agreeing to take them on, Meg and Sol act like the ship is theirs and try to make Dekker their indentured servant (their exact words), and you wonder if you’re supposed to like these characters, because you sure as shit don’t.
On the subject of Meg and Sol, let’s talk dialog. Everyone has this strange way of speaking. It’s very stilted, with a lot of repeated phrases, short responses, and expressions that don’t exist in our world. Word choice is strange, and some words are out of order or used in a nonsensical context. I think this is Cherryh trying to show the evolution of English hundreds of years into the future. Maybe? But on top of that, Meg and Sol have different accents. Meg sometimes sprinkles French into her dialog, making it sound even more strange, and Sol… I have no idea what her accent is supposed to be. I frankly can’t understand much of what she says. Here’s an example of some word salad she serves:
“Ben got data off that they got when they were after that ship. He's been working with it and he doesn't give a damn what it is to anybody else, it's his charts and he's not going to see it dumped.”
The second sentence is a little legible, but what is that first sentence? Is that a grammatical error or typo that made it into print? I’m inclined to say no since my book is a fourth printing, and that’s pretty much always how she speaks.
Later on, another character, Mitch, who I think is supposed to be their pimp(?) says: “Don’t screw up, Meg. You’re on tolerance.” To which Meg responds: “Take it and screw with it. I'm not on your tolerance.”
I feel like an illiterate moron reading this book. Is this Cherryh’s way of putting me further into Dekker’s broken mind? Kudos if so, it worked. I repeatedly had to go back and re-read sentences and even whole pages to figure out what people were talking about. Some of it is utterly inane. Take this exchange between a woman working with the government whom Ben is trying to sweet talk into expediting the transfer of Dekker’s ship to them:
“Mmmm. Not from this zone, Benjie. That’s a long procedures delay. Where the hell have you been?”
“Yeah, well, --but--” he turned on his nicest smile.
Maurice said: “Just so you know—” and turned on her terminal.
(That was the end of that exchange, she didn’t finish whatever she was going to say.)
Okay, so once Bird and Ben meet up with Meg and Sol at the station, we’re treated to dozens more pages of the four hanging out in their rooms at a tavern. Bird and Ben argue about the ethics of whether its okay to take Dekker’s ship, even after they take it. Meg and Sol are thinking of how to convince the men to give them the ship. Ben goes to talk to someone about getting the ship. Meanwhile, Dekker’s in the hospital and there are just as many pages of him being asked the same questions over and over again, giving the same answers over and over again, told to sign forms over and over again that he refuses to sign – you guessed it – over and over again.
Around page 170, Dekker is finally out of the hospital and he goes to track down Bird and Ben, having found out they now own his ship. He storms into their room and punches Bird, and you think “Finally, something is happening!” But it was merely fool’s gold. Bird, being the same overly nice guy he’s been all book, shrugs it off and buys him a beer. Ben, being the asshole he’s been all book, yells and whines, but is talked down once again by Bird. Meg and Sol are just as aloof as they’ve been all book. I think. We then get several dozen more pages of the group sitting around talking about spaceships and jobs and Cory.
I finally reached my limit after a bizarre shopping trip with Dekker, Meg, and Sol, and the three went back to their rooms where they were confronted by Ben randomly saying he was going to punch Dekker, again. I literally slammed the book shut and put it in my donation pile right then and there.
Supposedly, the book is about some conspiracy involving a mining company. Cory’s mom is mentioned once or twice, she thinks Dekker killed her daughter and wants him dead, or something. Her word matters because she’s the head of some powerful corporation, or something. It’s never made clear who she is or what she wants. But the Space Police let Dekker go anyway, and she never comes up again, so what was that about? I guess the crappy treatment he got at the hospital is supposed to be bad, but as an American I call that a Tuesday. Dekker keeps going on about there being another ship in the area when he crashed, but by page 220 (out of 350 pages, remember) that still wasn’t going anywhere and I didn’t care anymore.
The word I would describe to describe my experience with Heavy Time is ‘stunning.’ I am shocked at just how bad it is. I try to find something good in every book, movie, or game I review, but I can’t do that here. The characters are paper-thin cliches, the dialog is incomprehensible, the story doesn’t go anywhere, and its far too repetitive. If you told me this was a first draft of Cherryh’s first book and Gate of Ivrel was the one she wrote fifteen years later, I’d believe that. The gulf of quality between the two truly is awe-inspiring.
This is one hell of an introduction to an author: the first book of theirs I read is one of the best books I’ve read this year, while the second is the worst I’ve read in recent memory. I can’t wait to see where this roller coaster takes me with the third book.
