2007 YA SF, second in its series. Ishmael Horatio Wang transfers from
the galley to environmental maintenance on the intersteller merchant
ship, and grows up a bit more.
Mostly this is the story as before. Ish is no longer the complete
newbie, and there's a new novice crew member, who's clearly had
something of a bad time before she joined up. And Ish has to adjust to
a new way of working, a job that's essentially continuous rather than
having bursts of activity and then slack times. As in the first book,
all the crew are good and friendly people and it's all very relaxed.
The major plot development of the latter part of the book starts to
feel like a wish-fulfilment fantasy, though. Suddenly the Ish who's
been presented as naïve in all respects turns out to be sexually
experienced, a clothes makeover leaves him as sex on legs to all the
female crew, and (completely unforeshadowed) he has enough emotional
maturity to (a) realise that on this ship you don't sleep with fellow
crew even though nobody ever bothered to tell him what one would think
might be considered a moderately important rule, (b) when in port,
extricate himself from a setup with another spacer known to be "easy",
and (c) cop off instead with a third spacer who's the one all the guys
are after… and leave almost everyone happy with the situation. Oh, and
to work out instantly the exact right thing to say to his female
crewmates when they're feeling low. This just doesn't seem to match
the socially inexperienced youth portrayed in the first book and
indeed the first half of this one.
It's all right. Even at its high points it doesn't really sing, and
the latter part seems to matter far more to the author than it does to
me. But the basic business of learning to do complicated jobs well is
still enjoyable, and I'll read at least one more book.