Double Share
Genres: Fiction / Science Fiction / Space OperaLength: 9:51
Published on September 13, 2016
Format: Audiobook
An inexperienced officer. A dysfunctional ship. Life in the Deep Dark just got a whole lot harder.
In his first assignment as an officer, Ishmael Horatio Wang finds himself fresh out of school, wet behind the ears, and way out of his depth. Aboard the William Tinker the senior officers are derelict and abusive, the crew demoralized and undisciplined, and change unwelcomed and dangerous. Can Ishmael use what he learned aboard the Lois McKendrick to help the crew find the ship's heart? Or will he discover that bucking the system may come at too high a price? Return to the Deep Dark with Ish in this fourth installment of the award-winning Solar Clipper series, as he makes the transition from crew to officer.
I’ve been listening to this audiobook series and really loving it. But, it has highlighted for me some of the reasons that I don’t find myself reading a lot of male fiction authors.
The series follows a young man named Ishmael who is forced by circumstance to join a space freighter crew. In the first three books he climbs up the ranks of the crew and it is very minimal conflict. It is all about found family and being there for each other. It is lovely.
The only jarring spot is in the depiction of women.
Starting in the second book, Ishmael starts getting way more interested in the women of the crew. Now there is a rule that there is no fraternizing between crew members. That isn’t broken but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t think about it. It also means that there are a lot of descriptions of what the women of the crew look like. They are described as powerful and brilliant in addition to their physical attributes but it is very male gaze heavy. This is more apparent when you realize that in the whole story, Ishmael is never given a physical description. Not even hair color. Of course, every woman everywhere finds him irresistible. Obviously this is written as a POV standing for the reader who is presumed to be male.
Things get worse in the fourth book, Double Share. There is a time jump. Ishmael is on a new ship as a junior officer. This ship is a toxic mess. The captain and first mate are awful and the crew is being abused. The abuse is physical and sexual.
I have a general rule that I won’t read books that use sexual assault as plot points. I stuck with this one though because I’m invested in the series and it was happening mostly off page. I just don’t understand why male writers feel the need to add this to story lines. The story of an abused crew could have been done without the sexual aspect of it. Do people just like the forbidden aspect of it?
The other thing that bothered me was the male/female power dynamics. The captain and first mate were male. All the other bridge crew were women except for Ishmael who came in as the most junior crew member. Things start to change when he comes aboard. So, you have all these female officers who described as very competent at their jobs. As the story progresses they start to stand up for the crew and themselves. But, they have been putting up with this for years until a man who just graduated from college comes in and says they don’t have to?
There is also a lack of accountability for the actions of the male crew. I liked the ending of the book overall but several of the people who hurt others were not held accountable at all. It was hand waved away a bit with lack of evidence to prosecute but they were kept on the ship. There is no way that dangerous men who were hurting people would have just been forgiven and it all forgotten about. No one asked their victims what they thought of that. They just kept living in barracks with their abusers?
It was very uneven storytelling. He wrote complex and detailed women who needed to be saved by the first man who comes along. It didn’t seem to cross his mind that that didn’t make much sense. It was especially irksome that this was supposed to be taking place in the 2300s so you’d hope that we’d be over a lot of this stupidity by that time. I see that combination in women characters in a lot of male writers. It’s frustrating especially in a series that has so much great stuff going for it.
It’s a shame that it didn’t seem like the book was going in this direction until you got further into the series. Sounds like a man who wants to depict female characters in a positive light, but he isn’t quite “getting it.”
I don’t read a lot of books by male authors or rather, I don’t read a lot of books with male main characters but the problem is still there even with female authors and female main characters. Even if we stop reading/watching anything with women being abused, it doesn’t stop. More education is needed but I doubt it would change because we are taught by generations before us so it’s us we have to change.
Have a lovely day.
I don’t read male authors very often because of this as well as other reasons. I just do not connect with their POV in fiction. Movies and shows are very much the same way, although, oddly enough it hasn’t stopped me from watching tv. Maybe it should.