> I have a deep affection for stories where people are depicted as good, or even just good at their jobs. ...

I've mentioned the series before... and I'll pitch it again. Nathan Lowell's solar clipper series. It starts with Quarter Share. The first book starts with:

     Call me Ishmael. Yeah, I know, but in this case it’s really my name. Ishmael Horatio Wang. My parents had an unfortunate sense of humor. If they had known what I’d wind up doing with my life, they might have picked a different one—Richard Henry Dana, perhaps. Exactly why they picked Ishmael Horatio is a long, and not terribly interesting, story that starts with the fact that Mom was an ancient lit professor and ends with my being saddled with these non sequitur monikers.

The first several books are available as a free podcast, read by the author (and he's a good reader) that can be found on Apple Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/traders-tales-from-the...

GoodReads has a number of reviews that are spot on - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2334538.Quarter_Share (the writing is something that is "cozy" to some and "boring" to others... I liked the series but there's definitely a "nothing happens and there's no plot" aspect to it).

The main character starts out as a quarter share working in the galley... cleaning coffee urns.

▲ stephen_cagle a day ago | parent | next [-]

Holy molly. I actually felt quite similar about the first one, but the second one was so ridiculously absurd that I felt I had been fooled by the first (quarter share) book? Did you feel a huge change in the second book? I genuinely could not tell if I had been misreading the first one or if the book went straight off into wish fulfillment absurdity?

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6945329546 (quarter share)

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6973501411 (half share)

▲ shagie 18 hours ago | parent [-]

The first three are a "tour" of the way a ship operates. Steward (and cargo), engineering (book 2), and deck (book 3). Of the first three, I think the second is the weakest, but book 3 picks up. There's possibly a bit of wish fulfillment writing in there... after becoming an officer (book 4), there's very little of "time in port" as responsibilities dictate otherwise.

Book 4 has a time jump of college - four years are a few paragraphs... and then he's an officer in a very unhappy ship. Books 5 and 6 finish off the 'share' sequence. If the first three are coming of age of a youth, the next three are the coming of age of a man.

If you're going through and reading them, at this point I'd switch to the "Run" series which has two young women in a very small ship in the toeholds. There's a lot of world building associated with it. These have much more of a plot to them.

Dark Knight Station: Origins might be a good read at this point if we're establishing a reading order which establishes the backstory of two characters (one who appears in Home Run, the other who appears in Suicide Run). Home Run fills in some gaps outside of Ishmael. The three books together help with some of the larger backstory that will show up several times.

This then brings us back to Ishmael with the series In Ashes Born, To Fire Called, and By Darkness Forged. Not going to provide any plot elaboration that might spoil previous books (things do keep building).

And lastly, there's the "School" series with SC Marva Collins with School Days, Working Class, and Hard Knocks... and this is as far as the author has gotten with the Solar Clipper series.

---

If you had trouble with the 2nd, finish the 3rd and then give the 4th a try. I like the entire series and its world building. The mundanity of Ishmael's life (where exciting is often not a good thing). I really liked the later books - especially In Ashes Born.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/206519-solar-clipper-univer... - you'll see that Half Share is the lowest score of them.

▲ stephen_cagle 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Thank you for the reading list! I appreciate it.

Since you seem to be a real fan of the series and enjoy it, I will take your advice and read a future one at some point. But I would be curious what your feelings on a re-read of book 1 and 2 would be? I was just completely floored by the change in character that I saw in book 2. I felt like the book started with a normal, slightly above average, inquisitive character, who is handling new (and often mundane) challenges in his life one item (trading stand) at a time. And book 2 just retconed him into a gigachad who seemed to have none of the uncertain or hesitant nature of the book 1 character.

	▲	shagie 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'd contend that his insecurities were about the culture that he found himself in... which incidentally is an important point. From book 6: `"... Ms. Maloney, as soon as you signed the Articles, you became a spacer." I almost smacked myself in the head for saying that. I couldn’t even imagine how many times I’d said I wasn’t a spacer. I sighed inwardly at my own stupidity.` This is timestamped as 2372.. book 2 is 2352. I don't see it as him being insecure about himself as such. He's as much of a chad as any physically fit 19-year-old is... He's still as culturally insecure at 20 as he is when he's 40 - trying to figure out how he fits in as a spacer who wasn't born to a spacer family. So how does one handle the cultural insecurities at different points in one's life? At 20? At 40? nearly 50? Book 5 gets a bit into the difference between the expectations of a planet (or station) life and that of a spacer and the stress there on relationships (and how they can work). From the start of In Ashes Born this is stated quite clearly when talking to a therapist: `My sessions with Mal Gains continued to be interesting even if I didn’t find them terribly fruitful. He introduced me to more family-of-origin stuff. He placed great store in the idea that I’d been raised in a culture of academe with its values of knowledge, truth-seeking, and reputation but then shifted to the culture of spacer with values like dependability, competence, and upward mobility.` I'd contend that the overall arch of Ishmael's story is about seeking to be part of a family and with various people helping him learn that along the way.

▲ ghtbircshotbe 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I listened to the first audio book. It consists entirely of descriptions of the main character making coffee and hawking belt buckles. It is pretty tedious, maybe a more optimistic version of something like the game cart life

	▲	shagie 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Imagine getting a Steward's Assistant ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steward%27s_assistant ) position on a cargo ship... something like https://recruiting.paylocity.com/Recruiting/Jobs/Details/246... (granted, that one is likely only out for days rather than weeks or months) ... and if you've got that job, its much less interesting than the things that can happen when you're working engineering... or deck... or become an officer on deck. Yes, being a steward on a ship that has a few months between port of call is tedious... but you don't start out as a captain with the interesting things happening. You've got to work your way up the ladder and he started out on the bottom rung. Ship's Steward \| Life at Sea \| https://youtu.be/U02ndHzJGic as a book. One of the things about the series though... there's no grand military conflict going on. There's no fighting aliens or heroic space marines. It's (initially) the story of a young man getting his family suddenly pulled away from him and thrown into the Deep Dark as he searches for his place. Not actively... though he gets that advice too. There's also a component of needing to take an active role in making life decisions compared to letting life drag you along (things tend to go less well for Ishmael when he lets life pull him). Book 1: `“Look in your handbook, young Ishmael, and consider that your feet are already on a path. It might be wiser to select a branch before one is thrust upon you by circumstance.” With that, he strolled out of the galley.` Book 7: `His knowing look told me he remembered his own advice to me in the mess deck of the Lois. To choose a path before I found myself on one that I hadn’t chosen. “You once told me that I should consider that I’m on the path I’m supposed to be on.”` --- Books 4, 5, and 6 (Double Share, Captain's Share, Owner's Share) have much more going on with the decisions (and are likely more relatable as someone closer in age) than the equivalent of a day in the life of a unskilled 20 something... but the day in the life of the unskilled 20 something sets the foundations for how the decisions (and problems) of the man he becomes are dealt with.