The last book’s sorry was weak, but I figured it was just getting started. This book was weaker. The main character seemingly struggles with nothing. He’s 18. Everything he studies is so easy that the only time it seems hard is when it’s “accidentally” two tiers harder than what he thought it was. Every business venture he’s even vaguely associated with makes an order of magnitude more profit than he ever dreamed and then coincidentally doubles again. He makes 10 times more money trading in his spare time (which his friend does most of the work for) than his salary. He never loses a dime doing so. He gets introduced to some famous, super exclusive clothing designer and buys some clothes that cost nearly a year’s worth of his salary (or a month’s worth of his side hustle money), but that’s okay because he doesn’t have a single bill to pay ever. Then, all of a sudden, every woman he meets tells him he’s gorgeous and that everything he says is smooth taking magical prose that makes them want to take their clothes off. His job is “hard” but all he’s supposed to do is inspect and monitor for things to break, which one character says has literally never happened in his entire time on the ship, and he can spend the vast majority of his time studying to get promotions (which there is seemingly no competition for other than waiting for a spot to open up). Even when he “steals” a guy’s girl at the bar (a girl who is described as being so far out of his league that no one believes it, and she is still falling all over herself to get him in bed), the guy ends up having to leave station before any conflict happens.
This book has less tension than my last soak in a bath. The character’s worst day in the book is better than my best daydreams.
I generally like “day in the life” books where there isn’t some big emergency plot to solve (like Becky Chambers tend to write), but even those have characters with weaknesses, flaws, insecurities, bills, interpersonal conflicts, etc. This was just pure self indulgent fantasy.