it’s hard to quantify the exact reason these stories fail to get my 5th start. They’re just missing some subtle writer’s art that makes the difference between good and great. Overall, these books are a damn sight better than a lot of other stuff I’ve “read” via Audible and well worth your time.
I guess where it fails me is how traditional the characters’ archetypes are. It claims to be a spiritual successor to Firefly, but it’s more like a writer’s cosplay of that series. it’s missing the multiculturalism, the polyglottal mess of languages, they feeling that we ALL made it into space, and not just the white guys.
Firefly had an all white cast of main characters and yet I felt represented in the universe they lived in. I don’t feel the same can be said of Black Ocean. Maybe that’s as simple as because the main character listens to the most White American 70s rock’n’roll imaginable, and no one in the entire universe seems to listen to anything else.