Owner's Share
2014 • 580 pages

Ratings10

Average rating4.6

15

A bittersweet ending to the Share series. Bitter because it is an ending to an excellent set of novels (as well as due to some plot elements I'm not at liberty to discuss, as per Article 37). But sweet, at the same time, because we've seen Ishmael Wang grow from an 18-year old whiz kid into a man who has built a life for himself in the cold of the deep dark, one fully different from the kid he was but yet fully recognizable.

I was a little worried about this entry in the series at first, because the plot seemed like the kind you would find in a sitcom spin-off series: Ish gets his own ship and company, and has to take on a new crew-member who needs to fulfill a year in space to fulfill the terms of her father's will and inherit a shipping fortune.

The entire thing, though, is handled with enough skill and graceful crafting that once the story's started, you don't second-guess it, and get dragged into the narrative. It's a fitting ending, one that brings us full-circle to both the beginning of the entire series and the second half of the series that was started in Double Share, while still maintaining its own narrative and emotional arc separate from the series on the whole.

January 31, 2011Report this review