Balance of Trade by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller – C
This is one of 28 novels and many short stories set in their “Liaden Universe.” a collection of novels and short stories that share a common setting. This is the first novel I have read in the collection, and is the fist of three novels featuring the trader Jethri Gobelyn.
Its premise is that family owned and manned interstellar ships buy and sell goods on their own account and have specialists traders to do so profitably. Jethri is a 17 year old aboard one such ship, learning the trade. After his father’s death, his mother, the ship’s captain has no use for him, and through something of a misadventure he is given the opportunity to become the trader apprentice of a Liaden trader. The Liadens are humans, but who look on the Terrans as more or less barbarians. Jethri must learn the ornate customs of the Liadens to succeed. This was the story I was invested in, and if it was the only focus of the novel, it probably would have ranked as a B grade story.
However, the authors wanted to tell a wider story involving ancient technology, and so even after Jethri leaves the ship, we still have a storyline that follows events on the ship and this ancient super-technology which jumps in and out of the Jethri story – sometimes without any indication of the jump at all! ( Though perhaps that is the fault of the ebook formatting. Who knows?) In any event, I found not only that I didn’t care about that storyline at all, but it became annoying. I soon began to skim and eventually simply ignore it, figuring, correctly, that it would circle back around for the book’s climax. Which it did. The book lost points because of its dual focus, for me.
The second thing that took points away from this story, was the inclusion of human characters with telepathic powers. I found that jarring, out of character with the story’s universe – though it may well play a role on other stories in this universe. Nevertheless, I felt that it was it out of place, and just too 1950’s 60’s SF-y for my tastes today. It also had little to do with the story in this book, though perhaps it is just setting things up for the next book in the series.
And lastly, to be honest, the quality of the Jethri story tapered off as his storyline went on. It seemed as if the authors lost interest in his story of adjusting to this new life, as they steered the story back to converge with the second story arc, in what turned out to be a rather lame ending, I thought. Just to take one example, since Jethri lived all his life inside a space ship, he was frightened by the openness of living on a planet, when he had to do so. This is illustrated at the beginning of his stay on a planet, but is never mentioned again. I guess we're to assume that he got used to it quickly. But it was things like this -- big issues that are quickly dropped -- that disappointed me.
The problem with this book for me is, that this would not be how I would’ve written the story. Both as a reader and as a writer I hate multi-points of view, and the two dissimilar storylines did not work for me. Essentially they were two stories folded in together, which I found distracting, and as I said annoying. Lee and Miller can write their story however they want to write it, but I think that they watered down and hurried through the more interesting story to write one that, all in all, seemed rather lame. Perhaps it was all part of a larger plan and to set up the next two stories in the series. I have my doubts that I will ever find out.
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