2017 SF, first of an ongoing series. Jake Stewart is studying at the
Academy for space traders, but he's a poor scholarship kid and needs
to make some extra cash. Fortunately he has friends who will help…
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this relatively
by-the-numbers Bildungsroman. Everybody but one person is friendly
to Jake, but everyone is out to screw him over to a greater or lesser
extent in this corporate-dominated world. Jake turns out to have a
natural talent for forensic accountancy, and that's why I stuck with the
book—on the rare occasions he gets to use this (rather than the more
generic talent of grew up on a poor station, did his share of
maintenance, knows the tricks with the tech) the book lifts off the
ground and gingerly points its nose towards somewhere interesting…
before it comes crashing down for the next standard bit of Space
Stuff.
And then there are the casual inconsistencies. Jake is "several years
older than most of our students here", twenty-three, but is instantly
distracted by every beautiful woman he meets like a hormonal
teenager. Plausible, I suppose, but not an attribute I welcome in a
protagonist.
A hole blown in the observation window of an airlock door decompresses
a large cargo bay so quickly that people start getting the bends to a
crippling degree, and lose consciousness, within a few seconds.
A weapon is described as having "[a]lmost no recoil", and then firing
a single shot leads to "Jake fell over onto the floor from the
recoil".
I didn't love this, but every so often it held out the promise of
something better, so at some point I may try the next.