Mostly I complained today, but it helped me process some of the negativity. 🙂
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There’s a lot of things I would love to discuss, and question, that you touched on in your walk today. But I guess the one over-arching thing I need is a better understanding of what you mean by “a better book”.
Don’t get me wrong – I *LOVE* the first 5 Share novels. I love Tanyth’s stories, though I really would like to see what happens back in Ravenwood. (I was never one of those who was against ST:DS9 simply because the station didn’t go anywhere!) Goddess knows, you can *WRITE*.
But Owner’s Share left me confused. You say Ish rose to his level of incompetence, and it finally caught up with him… but many of the ways you *showed* that didn’t feel like ways Ish *would* fail. I can see his failure to get the contract vetted screwing him over. I can see his willingness to take people at face value biting him in the ass. His socialization level has *always* been a ticking time bomb, though I would expect that 20+ years would have rubbed some of that off. The ship owner’s key, though, did not feel like Ishmael. The failure to identify the windows when he was going over the engineering diagrams in the hotel room did not feel like Ish. Perhaps that was foreshadowed in his failure to take full advantage of the courses he’d downloaded to his mother’s portable back in Quarter Share and Half Share, but I had considered that more a case of not showing *EVERYTHING* he does (the basic truism that you hardly ever see the hero going to the bathroom).
I guess ultimately, it may come down to why I likely will never play EVE Online. The Share novels, through Captain’s Share, were really mostly PvE – though Double Share was less so. Owner’s Share, though, took what felt like a turn around a 4th spacial dimensional axis, into PvP territory. And all of a sudden, it felt like just another economic war story.
We’ll see where you take Ish to in the future. If Ish becomes a warrior of some breed, I’ll probably let him go and just read the books of Korlay. If he stays the problem solver he was in the first few Share novels, I’ll be happy with them.
But … I hope your answer about what makes a book “better” is more than just a matter of how much violence it has in it. Another author I like – H. Paul Honsinger, writing the Man of War trilogy – published it first independently, and then professionally through 47North. And he keeps saying how much better he thinks the 47North editions are – how much the editor helped him improve them. And what I see out of it is more humanistic problems – drugs, men cheating on paperwork that could eventually be a major problem – being turned into incidents of violence, with explosions, men cut off at the knees (literally), gee-whiz hypersonic wrenches almost punching a whole in the side of the ship… A nice long discussion on the psychology of the Krag, complete with an example of Krag poetry – gets cut completely, even though it makes the later actions of the Krag much more understandable. It’s like more and more, how “good” a book or a movie is, is measured by counting the explosions and minutes of hair-raising chase scenes. And ultimately, I’m hoping that Ish’s world doesn’t go in that direction. I’m hoping Ish doesn’t end up joining some kind of revolutionary force out to overthrow the CP Joint Committees, or vice-versa, becoming some kind of cop chasing down the Pirates of High Tortuga. I’d rather Ish end up like Richard at the end of South Coast, being a stable anchor while the storm breaks around him.
What makes a book “better” is up for grabs for each book.
In Owner’s Share I wanted a more nuanced set of failures. The basic thrust of this was “Peter Principle” and it’s entirely likely that I failed at that. The problems he faced all related to being thrust into a role for which he had absolutely no foundations. Unlike every other circumstance (except for the very beginning of Quarter Share), he had a support structure around him that allowed him to succeed. In every other book he had people around him who were willing and able to help him succeed.
It looked like that’s what was happening in Owner’s Share when they made it possible for him to get his ship. The problems arose in that he was the last cog in the wheel. His entire support structure consisted of Stacey Arellone. In Captain’s Share, he succeeded when he could have failed catastrophically because he had Greta to snap him with a reality check. He didn’t have her insight or guidance when he was making the critical (and sometimes stupid) decisions. He was on his own for the first time in the entire series except for those first few days in Quarter Share.
Furthermore, he was pushed beyond his limits. While he was trying to figure out the blueprints, he was exhausted and frazzled from all the changes that had happened in a matter of a few days. Even when he had a chance to look, he saw the odd textures on the outside of the hull from the bridge but never put two and two together.
I also wanted a plot that was more representative of the larger political structure of the Golden Age. William Simpson was a pirate. He regularly took advantage of those he was supposed to be representing. Christine Maloney knew it and warned Ishmael (after it was too late). Kirsten Kingsley only knew he was the power-behind-the-throne for Geoff Maloney (who undoubtedly knew better).
Going into this book I needed to achieve a few things.
The books already took him out of the “common man” paradigm as he worked into the captain’s chair and then into ownership. That was too much, too soon for a guy who still doesn’t really think of himself as a spacer. He’s operating in a completely different cultural melieu than he’s used to.
Now … Did I succeed? I think so.
Could I have done better? Of course. If I didn’t think I could have done better, I wouldn’t write another book.
(There’s a lot in your comment and I’m being pressed to put the computer down. Did I answer your questions?)
For the most part, yes. I’m interested in where you go from here, and as always, I’ll definitely give you a chance. There is, after all, the Chernikova (sp?) payout still to happen. The ending of Owner’s Share, after the Article 37 incident, left me very confused – I had no idea if Ish had sold the ship completely, decided to take one of the other staterooms for a while, TIA had impounded the ship for a while, or if perhaps Christine had made DST do some kind of trade-up so that she could keep the Iris for her own use, keeping majority ownership but having someone else act as CEO so she could run routes acting as the Steward & Chef. Or even if Christine had managed to console Ish, and started him on towards a more family oriented set-up (which honestly, I’m not sure Greta would do).
The next book will, of course, make all this more clear simply by showing us where Ish is when it starts, but in the mean time, I honestly found it very very confusing.
Hm. I thought it was pretty clear that Ishmael sold the company–which included the Iris. Christine has plans for the ship and the brand, but I didn’t spell that out because it wasn’t important. She fulfilled the terms of the will and chose to keep chairman of the board and her majority ownership position. In that role she directed the board to hire Jarvis to be CEO and to purchase Ishmael’s shares in the company.
Even without the Chernyakova payout (I think that ship will be coming back), Ishmael is left a very wealthy man. At least for the time being. While it’s a princely sum for an individual, he’ll be meeting up with some of his old gang at Port Newmar and will be pushed off to see how the other half lives. I’m not exactly sure how that’ll happen, but that’s the plan.
Oh, and he’ll find a relationship along the way.
Good. As long as it’s not another harpy like Greta, who thinks its her right to decide whether they have a relationship, no matter what he wants. Telling him off about avoiding her, fine. Telling him that it’s not *HIS* place to decide they can’t be together, was over the line. Personally, if I’d been Captain, she’d have been beached at the next docking.
I’m working on catching up on podcasts, but after listening to this one, thought I’d make a couple of comments.
I finished reading Owner’s Share, oh, about a week and a half ago. Is it a perfect book? No, but guess what, you probably won’t ever write the perfect book. I know for sure I’ve never read one that I’d call perfect. Personally, I rather enjoyed Owner’s Share, in part because of some of the things that people have complained about.
First, I thought it was a little refreshing to see him as something of a fish out of water. Up to this point, Ish has been just a little too perfect, able to tackle the wide varieties of tasks without problem. It’s about time to see him in a position where he doesn’t have all the answers, and really needs to rely more on the people around him to solve the problems he’s encountering.
I didn’t particularly find the book too long, but then, I’m one that actually feels some of the earlier books have been too short. Could you have made some of that a little shorter? Maybe, but I’m not overly convinced that it would have made the book better. My only *real* complaint in this particular book is the length of time it took for him to notice that the engineer wasn’t doing his job. And even that’s somewhat understandable to me, given that even on the really bad ships, for the most part, he’s been surrounded by competent people that do their jobs. Yeah, he’s seen examples of ships where that’s not true (Chernyakova), but it’s never really been people on his crew. Outside of CC, who he was able to fix, it just never seemed to be an issue.
Actually, for me, the part I had a hardest time grappling with was all the comments I’d seen about how Ish is left in such a terrible position at the end of this book. I kept getting farther and farther in the book, and kept wondering how something that tragic could fit in the end. I’d definitely would have been happier if I’d never known any of that, because I actually found the ending to be something of a let down as a result (“THIS is what everyone is complaining about?”). I actually find that it bookends pretty nicely with how his life in space started. And I definitely don’t think that Ish is necessarily left in such a bad position, even if you never wrote anything else about him. Yeah, he’s had a tragedy in his life. Either he picks himself up or he spirals down into a drain. If he does pick himself up, he’s an extremely employable person. He’s turned around two problem ships for a company, I’d have to think that other companies would notice that type of thing, and would be more than happy to hire someone with that type of track record.
Looking back over the series, I’d probably say my biggest annoyance was that I just have this nagging feeling that the economics of the universe are out of whack. The prices for various items, and what’s mentioned for salaries, just don’t seem to add up to something that makes sense to me, especially when we started talking about contained loads of stuff. Overall, I’d call that a pretty minor problem, so if that’s my biggest complaint, that’s good for me.
Personally, I’d love to see more things set in the universe. You’ve created a pretty decently fleshed out place that has a lot of interesting intricacies, and I feel there’s lots of other things in there that can be written about, even if you never wrote more stuff on Ish specifically.
The economic model needs some balancing, Gary. No question.
Basically shipboard pay is a pittance without the shares. Everybody knows it going in. Of course, almost all living expenses are covered by the ship so basically you get paid pocket cash. That was on purpose.
When I started having him buy ships, etc, that got a little out of hand. Trying to calculate what the fare should be to cover the cost of fuel and salaries … that was straight off the cuff and probably falls wide of the mark.
So it goes. 🙂