Half Share

This is not a book to deeply engage your brain. The main character can apparently do nothing wrong, and the worldbuilding is very shallow. It's fine if you just want to rub your eyes over some words, though, and I do intend to continue reading the sequels. Just a couple of caveats.

Firstly, for a series revolving around trading, the economics often make very little sense (e.g. the subplot where a beginner crocheter could create goods that sold for orders of magnitude more than the raw materials — in the real world, their shawls would have less value than the unused yarn). Also high-end tailoring doesn't work like that — they don't just magically find you ready-made garments that fit you perfectly!

I do generally try to ignore things like the above, since no author can be an expert on everything, and the ability to suspend one's disbelief is an important part of being able to enjoy a book, but it does feel much worse here than average.

Secondly, there's a lot of going on about how great people's bodies are, and how none of the crew are fat. This is not fun stuff to read and I wish the author hadn't included it.

Volume 2 of the story of Ishmael Wang features him getting a promotion, transferring to a new department, and becoming a bit of a mentor to one of his coworkers. As in the first book, not exactly the kind of stuff you would usually associate with either “space opera” or “science fiction”, but rather just a damn good story in a space operaesque setting.
At the same time, one of the things that Lowell does here is balance the scales of Wang's meteoric rise by having him make some mistakes, especially in his personal life, which was nice - he was starting to feel like he was too perfect of a character at times, so it's good to see he's just as flawed as the rest of us.