Double Share

Sample sizes are tricky things. Reading the first three books of Nathan Lowell's Solar Clipper series, one was left at times with a feeling that the characters were in the positions they were in, and the ship was operated the way it was, because that was just the way things had to be to survive, and thrive, in the Deep Dark.

Then along comes Double Share, which blows all that out of the water. Ishmael gets out of the Academy, and upon a ship that's as opposite the Lois McKendrick as could be possible, and which must be something of his personal form of hell. The captain's almost debilitatingly paranoid, the first mate (who, if there's ever a movie made of this, should be played by Daniel Day Lewis for sure) is a sadist, and a crew that is at best disinterested or at worst despondent. He approaches all this with his typical Wang charm, though, and starts shaking things up almost immediately.

More than any of the previous stories in the series, this one felt like a more traditional story than others in the series, in that there was an antagonist, and a climax that is nicely foreshadowed by a characteristic of the protagonist's that we see in the first act. It's not formulaic, by any means, but more conventional, although Lowell balances that by experimenting a bit more with his delivery voice - this Ishmael sounds appropriately older and more mature than the Ishmael of the previous books, which was a nice, subtle choice on his part.