Double Share

by Nathan Lowell

Ebook, 2008

Status

Available

Call number

Fic SF Lowell

Publication

Durandus

Description

In his first assignment as an officer, Ishmael Horatio Wang finds himself fresh out of school, wet behind the ears, and way out of his depth. Aboard the William Tinker the senior officers are derelict and abusive, the crew demoralized and undisciplined, and change unwelcomed and dangerous. Can Horatio use what he learned aboard the Lois McKendrick to help the crew find the ship's heart? Or will he discover that bucking the system may come at too high a price?

User reviews

LibraryThing member TadAD

The plot of this episode was a welcome change from the last, mainly because it was no longer Ishmael proving how good he is as both a spacer aboard the Lois McKendrick and a Romeo everywhere else. That story line was becoming old.

However, the entire book is centered around rape and assault and it

just didn't work. The characters were far too flat. Some of the victims felt trapped and seeing them unable to change things made sense.

However, Lowell populated the ship with others who were competent, decisive and moral to one degree or another. In fact (and now I'm trading on having started the next book before writing this), some of them turn out to be quite upstanding citizens. None of them were physically restrained or under threat of blackmail. Yet, they were never able to even articulate a protest, much less drop a word to the authorities or the ship's owner. Or, better yet, to arrange an "accident" in the highly hazardous environment in which they all lived.

Well, until Ishmael comes along and saves the day.

As Lowell reaches for themes that are more and more adult, his characters are remaining simplistic. This doesn't work.

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LibraryThing member JosephLYoung

Another wonderful story from the Growth of Ishmael Wang. Ish has just graduated from the academy and is traveling to catch a billet as a newly minted third mate at the Diurnia Orbital. He traveled with an interesting group of passengers including a Mr. Blaylock and his man Kurt who took it upon

himself to help Ish improve his Tia Chi form and worked out daily with him. Again, Ish gyrated towards older beautiful women who became his friends, mentors and lovers. He was to meet his employer, Diurnia Salvage and Transport (DST) who had started out doing salvage work and bulk transport contracts for the Confederated Planets when the CP was developing across the quadrant. The current CEO was the grand son of the founder, a man named Geoffrey Maloney. The data base reported a fleet of about a dozen ships all specializing in bulk freight,. A third of them were tankers and the rest were bulk ore and grain haulers. The interview at DST with a Mr. Nelson went without hitch and all the paperwork was filled out and a medical given and orders to report to Captain Rossett on the William Tinker at dock nine in the morning. The first indication that there might be problems came from the Bar Maid who indicated that the Tinker wasn't a happy ship and had gone through a lot of crew. Checking in at the ship was also unexpected. The call button was answered with a query, "Yeah, can I help you?" Normal procedure would have called for someone to come out and welcome the new Third Mate but nothing happened for over three tics then the small personal hatch started to move and an able spacer with a greasy looking shipsuit with an oily stain across the left arm stood on the prow with his hand on the mechanism "You the new Third?" he asked bluntly and without preamble or salute. He stepped back and nodded his head to invite me aboard. When stepping aboard and moving my gravity tug along, I was taken by the meaty smell, much worse than even the scrubbers that I had become used to. This was going to take some getting used to. To get to the point, the captain was someone who spent his time with videos in his cabin and stayed out of the work areas or the bridge leaving running the ship to his First Mate, David Burnside, coming out only when transitioning to the deep dark or when making port. The Second Mate, Arletta Novea was in charge of astrogation. She got Ish logged on to the ships system and assigned a cabin, telling him the captain would likely want to meet with him when he returned shortly before launch time. It didn't take long to discover a very disfunctional crew and a ship that hadn't had kind care or service. Burnside was a sadistic bully and took pleasure in using the weaker crewmembers as his personal chattel. He had a couple of enforcers in his watch that ran roughshod over everyone to support Burnside's daily excursions into drinking and forcing female crew into sexual liaisons (against rules and regulations but, with a captain that ignored his activities and a First Mate that was law in the deep dark, who could act and to what end?) Coffee and food was terrible and the cook was a baker that had been an engineer but moved into cooking to change his responsibilities. Ish carefully used his acquired skills at the various ratings he had mastered to affect change in a non confrontational was giving credit to the people he helped. He was one of the officers that didn't exploit the female crew members and gained credibility with the crew for his positive actions and chipping in and making change. Burnside and his enforcers tried to intimidate Ish and did have him scared several times but, during a final confrontation, Ish used his skills at Tia Chi to move out of the way during the night following Burnside's letting his henchmen into Ish's compartment and narrowly ducking a wild punch that ended up on the bulkhead breaking Burnside's hand. The two henchmen charged Ish and when he dodged them, they continued into Burnside, breaking his ribs and banging his head against the bulkhead. They also were damaged by their fall and Ish escaped without injury, allowing him to deny any involvement in the activity which occurred largely in the passageway outside his bunk area. Burnside was held in the medical unit until the trip was over. The grandson/owner had been trying to find charges to allow him to discharge the captain and First Mate but, until Ish was able to get the crew together, was unable to break up the Captain/First Mate conspiracy. The owner acknowledged that he had recruited Ish for exactly the mission he accomplished out of the academy upon the recommendations of the management. Yup, another good story from Nathan. I'm still waiting for more of the Pod Casts to be translated into books. A really great work! Read the series in order to collect the back ground necessary to appreciate Ishmael's successes!

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LibraryThing member rmagahiz

Our hero charms (nearly) everyone he encounters, facing some increased measure of personal peril on this go-around. If the antagonists were a little thin on motivation and some of the plot points don't actually pan out when all is said and done, it hardly matters given the interesting way the

author extricates his characters from their predicament.

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LibraryThing member DWWilkin

My feeling for this book, and for the entire series is that we have one story that has been chopped up amongst all the work of Mr. Lowell. Then stretched with inconsequential filler to try and make a tale book length.

I think that Lowell has reached a crisis point in his writing, and that is to

understand that conflict involves making his hero have some skin in the game. His hero, Wang, never seems to be bothered about the circumstances that set him on the road he is on, so there is no growth there, nor does Wang seem to feel particularly challenged by any of the problems he has ever had. He could study for all the different types of ships jobs there are and pass. He could do this with ease, or that.

Never does the hero face a choice that could lead to death. So never is there truly any tenseness for the character to face. It is all easy peasy. Lowell has an interesting world. He has an interesting trade protocol, but what he fails at is bringing an interesting story to development.

These could be better served by learning from the story arc. To place challenges and development before us. With that as a goal these could be strong as the Liaden books are. But until Lowell takes a look at his efforts in such a context they aren't.

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LibraryThing member scmerritt

This book in the series is a very dark departure from the first 3. Ishmael is put in a very bad situation of abuse aboard a new ship after graduating from the space academy. It is his first berth as an officer and he must now deal with a captain and crew that abuses the crew in very dark ways. He

must grow and figure out how to deal with the situation. What can he do, how will he survive and help those being abused including himself. A very different story than the first three but I found it still a very good read. Will definitely continue to read the rest of the series.

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LibraryThing member jamestomasino

Wow. The enjoyment I've been getting from this series derives almost entirely from the low-conflict, light-hearted nature of the books. Double Share takes that and throws it out the window. My first reaction was positive. This could be something new, something great. Then reality set in.

Rather than

the Lois McKendrick, our protaganists' home in the Deep Dark for the past few books, we now move the setting to a new ship, the William Tinker. This ship is gross. It's filthy, smells, everyone is nasty to one another, and, oh yeah, the entire female crew is being constantly raped.

I absolutely hate rape stories, whether in book, TV, or film. They make me want to throw up, and that's not how I enjoy spending my light-hearted reading time. Really, the only way to make it worse is to treat the rape as anything less than horrific. Guess what Nathan Lowell managed to do?

I'm not going to really spoil anything here because this book can't get any more spoiled. In the end, after the dust has settled and things are "resolved", the new female captain (who has witnessed these atrocities happening for years) keeps one of the rapists aboard. The character even manages to explain away what he did by saying "he's a good boy that fell in with a bad crowd". How about we tell that to the women he raped time and time again over the course of YEARS while they had no means of escape except the emptiness of space? How about we go back to the part when we learn that he has murdered women that have tried to fight back or complain?

This book was digsusting. Much more so than the William Tinker.

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LibraryThing member kevn57

Story really changed from the first three books in the series but was very satisfying in the end, I'm so glad I found this series, looking forward to the next volume..

LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey

Finally an officer - the whole Academy is skipped over. But he ends up on a bad ship, with a bad captain, and has to solve it...and does, of course. Active sexual harassment and rape (offscreen). And a very bad marriage, though he escapes with minimal damage (to either of them).

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