Quarter Share Podiobook

My treadmill entertainment for the past few weeks has been Nathan Lowell's Quarter Share, "a tale from the golden age of the solar clipper." I've blogged about the ebook before, but this is the first time I've listened to the podiobook.

The story is simple but compelling. 18-year-old Ishmael Wang loses his mother in a flitter crash and finds himself in a predicament. A corporation owns the planet he lives on. He has to get a job or get off of the planet, and he can't afford the fare. With few choices available, he signs on as crew on a passing trading ship.

From there we follow Ishmael as he tries to find his place in a strange new environment. Nothing really exciting happens. There are no battles, no mortal danger. The classic tropes of space opera are missing. And yet the stakes are extremely high. Ishmael has been thrust into a new life, and he has to find a way to make it work.

Overall I was quite impressed. The story pulled me in on the first page and never let me go, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. It's a coming-of-age story set in a fascinating and detailed environment. I felt as if I was peeking into the future and seeing what life on a real interstellar spaceship might be like.

A few parts were a bit slow, as I got more detail than I needed about the minutia of Ishmael's day. And there's a description of the economics of trading that becomes downright repetitive. But these are minor blips. Overall the quality of the storytelling is absolutely excellent.

You can read it as an ebook, but It's available in audio form as well. It's free from podiobooks.com here: http://podiobooks.com/title/trader-tales-1-quarter-share/.

The quality of the audiobook is quite high. Not every author should record their own reading of a book, but Lowell does an excellent job. Nothing about it sounds amateurish or home-made. It's excellent work.

I usually like a bit more excitement in my books, but Quarter Share is excellent and I'm glad I picked it up.


Series website: http://solarclipper.com/
Podiobook: http://podiobooks.com/title/trader-tales-1-quarter-share/