Spoiler warning: I don't think reading this can possibly spoil the book, but you may disagree. So let the reader beware.
Tripoint is a novel populated by the usual Cherryh characters: the neurotic, the psychically maimed, the persecuted, and the paranoid. In some of Cherryh's novels, this works very well--Cyteen is a case in point. I can't think of a single character in Cyteen I would want to have dinner with (unless I could bring my own comestibles and otherwise secure myself against drugging or other skulduggery), but all the same, Cyteen was a powerful and captivating novel. That's because this novel has so many interesting ideas--reading Cyteen will change the way you think about cloning, genetic manipulation, human rights, and freedom of the will. I'm not saying you'll change your opinions on these subjects--but you'll have re-examined them, at least.
Cyteen also has Ariane Emory, evil mistress of the webs of deceit. In her more malevolent incarnation, Ariane is fascintatingly evil; her actions are callous, manipulative and abhorrent--but there is fascination in the sheer magnificence of her depravity. In her more benign incarnation, Ariane is a sympathetic character caught in the tangles of her own machinations, and that of her conniving former associates. (You'll have to read Cyteen to understand what I mean.)
But Tripoint is not anything like Cyteen. The C.J. Cherryh novel that Tripoint reminded of most is Merchanter's Luck. Less ambitious than Cyteen, Merchanter's Luck is a love story of sorts: two people who have good reason to distrust one another find themselves inextricably bound in a common venture that will fail unless they do learn to trust. Cherryh succeeds in making the characters in MMerchanter's Luck real, and I found myself caring about what happens to them. We know that the two protagonists ought to trust one another, and we know why they can't, and we very much want them to break through the barrier that keeps them apart.
Like Merchanter's Luck, Tripoint is a story of relationships that is played out mostly on ships and stations. In this case, however, the characters aren't two potential lovers who may (or may not) be able to enter a relationship with each other, but a twisted sort of family that would be much better off if they'd never met.
Tom Bowe-Hawkins is the son of Austin Bowe and Marie Hawkins. We cannot, however, speak of a "love child" here--Tom was begotten by rape. (At least Marie says it was rape--Austin apparently has his own view on the matter, and we never really learn the truth). Marie, for reasons of her own, decides not to abort Tom--a fact she never ceases to throw in his face. She is a manipulative and rather cranky mother who does some twisted things to her son. To spare the details, Tom is convinced that sex is pretty much rape (when he makes love he constantly asks his partner, "Did that hurt?"), he's a classical Oedipal case, and he's sure that Austin Bowe is the devil incarnate.
Given this psychological preconditioning, it's no wonder that Tom is quite distraught to find himself shangaied aboard his father's ship. Of course, no one--least of all his father or the brother he didn't know he had--wants Tom aboard; his shangai-ing was all a mistake, it seems. Evidently, this was intended by Cherryh to be a very intense situation--the prodigal son returns to find himself clapped in the brig of his father's ship and universally distrusted and despised. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work out that way; the situation is merely uncomfortable instead of nasty for Tom, and consequently the novel never reaches the heights of drama at which Cherryh aimed.
The trouble is that Tom's family isn't really all that evil--they're just kind of irritable because people have been mean to them. We're supposed to think (at least at first) that the crew of Bowe's ship are nothing but pirates, and that Austin Bowe himself is probably the chief pirate who cuts throats just for the exercise. However, their actions never let this illusion take hold--the worst that happens to poor Tom when he awakens in the ship's brig is that his brother jerks his chain a bit--literally. Austin Bowe does a lot of grumpy posturing, but he never really looks like he's going to do Tom serious damage. Probably the worst thing that happens to Tom is that he's raped by the ship's navigator, a gorgeous woman who apparently gets bored during those long hyperspace jumps. (This is bad, you say?)
For evil to be interesting, it must be dramatic and not banal. Minor evil is boring--and I'm afraid that's all we have in Tripoint. There's no one in this book who compares to Ariane Emory in Cyteen, and Tom's mother is certainly no Signy Mallory.
There are also no new ideas in Tripoint. All the props of Cherryh's universe are there--the ships and space stations she does so well, the renegade Fleet, the trading ships. But we don't learn any more about Cherryh's universe from Tripoint, any more than we examine interesting ideas, as in Cyteen. The only element that might have saved Tripoint is characters we can care about--then it would have been a sucessful "people" novel (like Merchanter's Luck), rather than a novel of ideas like Cyteen. Alas, not a single one of the characters is one I would like to have lunch with. This is not because I would be afraid they'd poison me, but because I'm certain that they would be quite rude and most likely boring. Thus, I don't really care when it turns out, for example, that Tom's relationship with his brother and father improve marginally at the end of the book.
I have to say that Tripoint is tautly written--it does keep you turning the pages. If this is all you ask of a book, then by all means read it. But wait for the paperback.
Cherryh can do much better than this. I note with alarm that she's lately been turning out some fairly pedestrian novels (Foreigner, Heavy Time, and Hellburner come to mind), and it may be that she needs to take a break and recharge her creative cells. It may also be that she's burned out on the Company Wars universe; if so, she ought to ignore the pleas of her fans and write no more of them.
I do not generally buy hard back sf, preferring to save my money and wait for the paper back version, so when I found myself at the till with a copy of C.J. Cherryh's Tri-point in my hand I felt a bit like a nicotine addict in the tobacconist. There is every chance, I told myself that you won't enjoy this as much as you think you are goingto, and it is costing you more money than it ought. I yield to no-one in my admiration for, indeed addiction to, most of the Cherryh canon, but even her greatest fan would have to admit that a few of the novels have lacked freshness and been a trifle formulaic.
To anyone who shares these feelings, I can report that they need have no concerns about Tripoint. It is a story set in the milieu of merchanters and star stations like Downbelow Station & Merchanters Luck, but with a fresh cast of characters, who since they are mostly merchanters have a lot in common with Sandor and Alison Reilly, but are still new and interesting. Like her best stories the plot rattles along, working on a number of different levels with the technology nicely worked into the action. The story concerns the working out of a decades long feud between the merchanters Corinthian and Sprite which started when a one night stand between two young crew members went wrong on Mariner station, and finishes in almost space opera style at Tripoint, a jump point between Pell and Viking where anything can and does hide.
Cherryh uses the book to develop the social dynamics and to a lesser extent the economics of a merchanter society. Merchanters are star ships trading between star station, the ship supporting a full population of men women and children. Their journeys run into months and years of elapsed time, but because of time dilation effects, far longer as time runs for the stations. The result is that the only social continuity for the merchanters lies with other merchanters whom they can only meet when in dock on the stations, or passing each other at dark, and dangerous in the aftermath of war, jump points between the stations. Cherryh is unsurpassed among current sf writers at following through the implications of such a scenario, but as good a job as she does with the merchanters I find it hard, as yet, to see the system she describes as a sustainable one in social and economic terms. However there is a hint at the end of the story that we shall see more of the principal characters in some future novel. If so it I am very much looking forward to it.