This is book 2 of the "Solar Clipper Trader Tales" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

 

Second book in the Solar Clipper Trader Tales series. These appear to be published by Amazon primarily; they say Lowell started by podcasting his novels. His biography shows a PhD in Educational Technology, among others. The Bs is business administration. Which means to my jaundiced eye he's not a very hopeful candidate for writing books that interest me. Well, I loved the first book in this series, so I guess I can't be right all the time.

The visit to M. Roubaille's emporium is perhaps a bit over the top. Or at least a nod to appearance being more important than I believe it is. Still fun, though. And we do get an expert opinion that Brill, Diane, and Bev are unusually attractive. I think we're being told that Bresheu is more highly regarded that Roubaille, even though he's operating a less impressive business; the reaction to the monogrammed data chip is quite extreme.

Also a pink shirt and an olive jacket are more than a little over the top.

Eek, he has paella delivered in a "crock pot". Um, no, not the way it's done. There's a specific utensil called a "paella pan" for a reason, and it's quite shallow and flat, the opposite of a crock pot.

There have been references to sexual relationships between crew being frowned upon or barred or something (and some suggestion that it varied by ship). There isn't much privacy, with people sharing bunkrooms. But there's enough flirting that clearly nobody has had their libido suppressed. More worrysome, nobody has explained anything to our first-person narrator newbie about what the rules are, and he hasn't made any mistakes that got corrected yet.

I think maybe we're about to find out more about this. Ishmael's amazon posse is taking him out on the station for the evening, and the flirting has increased considerably. Ah; they're meeting friends from other ships, which definitely opens up the possibilities a bit.

Ishmael doesn't think gin and tonic is a typical drink for an 18-year-old, but that's when I started drinking them. Still do, too. Though they've invented me a new favorite gin since then (Bombay Saphire).

Okay, here's a reference to Ish not sleeping with anybody on board—casual, treating it as perfectly possible but no happening. No reference so far to anybody else sleeping with anybody on board either (and see previous on privacy issues). So I'm now less sure what the rules are. Maybe more explanation will show up. Yep; Lois' crew don't sleep together at least on board. Now, I don't know how he knows this, since it's never been discussed previously.

I'm pleased with the ongoing trope that Ish's mother being a literature professor makes him more worldly. He's been exposed to a huge variety of experience vicariously, and has learned to analyze and hence learn from them.