My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Klondike days of asteroid mining are long over and it’s getting harder to make a living with the government and corporations slapping regulations over routes, assays, claims, flight certification. A lot of it the name of safety, but really it’s all about Earth controlling the Belt and easing the freelancers out.
This might sound like something out of the Expanse, but it’s the premise for CJ Cherryh’s Heavy Time, the first prequel to her Hugo-winning Downbelow Station which – together with over twenty other Alliance-Union novels – charts a story of humanity’s future that spans multiple worlds and centuries of time.
James SA Corey acknowledged the debt the Expanse owes to Cherryh’s books in a recent Twitter exchange:

Bird is an old-timer, playing the freelance game long enough to have watched the company slowly erode the rights and profits of belters and he’s seen how bad things get when the freelancers try to push back. Ben is a product of the company system. He thinks he’s smart enough to play them at their own game. Dekker is hopelessly lost, a rookie freelancer traumatised by the accident but desperate to find justice for his dead partner. And then there’s Meg and Sal, both with chequered pasts and links to subversive elements, who see Bird and Ben as potential meal tickets until things start getting very political and the whole situation spirals out of control.
Heavy Time is a masterclass both in demonstrating how to unfold detailed worldbuiding with the lightest of touches as well as how character propels plot.
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