2008 YA SF, third in its series. Ishmael Horatio Wang continues his
career as space crew on a trading ship.
Well, there are some slight challenges this time. Ishmael is
going to be bumped from his berth by officialdom, but he doesn't
worry… and since he's apparently the only person in the universe who's
ever thought of programming a computer it turns out that they can
indeed find a place for him elsewhere in the roster. (Seriously, I got
a strong XKCD 1831 feeling off this
whole strand, except instead of the last panel everyone is going "yay,
our saviour".) He's back to being something of a hormonal idiot in his
relationships, in spite of last book suggesting that he'd got that
sorted. And, after he casually passes all the exams for all the crew
positions, he's terribly surprised when his mentors suggest that just
maybe he ought to think about going to the Merchant Academy and train
as an officer.
All of these things basically take the entire book to be resolved, so
there's never much in the way of urgency (though there is a shipboard
emergency that's slightly more of a hazard, and a tiny bit of
interpersonal conflict). To be fair this is pretty much the recipe as
before, with the one major misstep of Ish being able casually to do
something that none of the experts has ever managed; but it feels more
like filler than the earlier books did, perhaps because the next major
development of Ish going to the Academy is constantly dangled in front
of the reader (but in fact is going to be largely elided, because at
the start of the next book he's just graduated).
Still, these are quick reads and they're fun as an occasional change
from a more conventional narrative style.