Full Share
Year: 2008
Author: Nathan Lowell
Length: 300 pages
It may have taken three books to get there, but this is the story I was expecting from the start of this series. Full of action, romance, uncertain futures, and career advancement, Nathan Lowell’s Full Share takes full advantage of the setup provided in the previous two books of the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series. Almost acting as a capstone to a trilogy, this novel wraps up Ishmael Wang’s time on the Louis McKendrick as it sets him up to reach even higher in his career. Each piece of the plot set in place is shown to be significant as the story reaches an exciting midpoint.
All qualms I had of Lowell’s previous books in this series have been ably dispelled through this book. While Quarter Share lacked in the excitement of real ship emergencies and romantic subplots, Full Share gives ample helpings of critical problems and social setups. Now that Ishmael’s manhood has been proven in Half Share, the focus of his love life is now an accompaniment to a well-rounded series of events instead of the defining element of the plot. Lowell manages to do all this while making the first-person narrative natural and realistic, a trait shared by all books in the series so far.
While I did notice it some in the previous books in the series, I have to say that the repartee of the crew of the Lois McKendrick has been a joy to read and listen to (Lowell himself is an incredibly able narrator of his own material). Even the minor characters have a depth and well-rounded nature that I feel is rare in many science fiction stories. I look forward to the remaining half of this series, especially if it’s as good as this book was. The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series is rapidly becoming one of my favorites and should be a “must-read” for anyone interested in realistic science fiction.
A fantastic midpoint to an incredibly engaging series, I give Full Share 5.0 stars out of 5.
