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South Coast (2007)

by Nathan Lowell(Favorite Author)

4.2 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Durandus

review 1: It is so good to be able to read this tale some years after enjoying the podcast version. This is a spin-off tale from the Trader Tales of Nathan Share books and shows a different perspective to that universe. Like all Nathan's books this is a gentle but gripping read following down to earth character's. Unfortunately there are a few.. Let's call them formatting errors here that need fixing and should have been picked up in proofing, but they don't distract too much from the flow of the story. It's a book that's well worth picking up and I'm looking forward to the long planned sequel Cape Grace.
review 2: Nathan Lowell has a strking ability to make the ordinary extraordinary, without the conceits of fiction that are found in so much mainstream literature.... more I'm sure his next project will be about painting a room, and it will be tremendously exciting and a thrill to read.In the Trader Tales series, he wove lessons on economics into the story and showed us how he could apply and extend his own shipboard experience to space travel in the future. In Ravenwood, Lowell flexed his literary muscles, effortlessly providing us with the nuances of herbology and holistic medicine for a tale set in a time on the opposite side of the spectrum. In Shaman Tales, he expands on the universe of the Solar Clipper, and applies his more direct experience to the future of fishing as an industry.In Shaman Tales, the story has a wee bit of a steampunk feel to it, combining traditional fishing technique with advance prefabrication technology. Moreso than the other Tales of the Solar Clipper, this story focuses more on skill and ability than training. There is no mention of training or certifications that can advance a fisherman from deckhand to mate to skipper; it seems obvious in the telling that the only way you're going to advance is through hard work, experience, and on-the-job training. Fishing, as an industry, lacks only unionization, which would actually hamper the plotline significantly. Shaman Tales is two separate stories. One is of a young boy, the son of the village shaman. It is his birthright to become a shaman, but he struggles with his desires to be the fisherman his father won't let him be. There's a good bit of backstory behind the Welkies that were introduced in the Trader Tales, and it feels right at home.The second story is about the fishing company's struggle to deal with new quotas that have been handed down from corporate headquarters. They are universally decried as unreasonable and unattainable, yet the management must find ways to try to meet that quota. At times, the stories intersect. Of course, when they do, it feels very organic and flows nicely.This is not an edge-of-your-seat story, though it is rife with tension that any reader can relate to. Job performance and security is something that most of us have to think about on a daily basis, and this story raises some pretty harrowing circumstance. It's interesting to see the same kind of reactions that working humans would see if this happened to us at work as well: indignation, blustering, some abandonment, and eventually people hunkering down to try to solve the problem at hand. I hope to see more in this series. less

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