A Pale Light In The Black (by KB Wagers) Reread - Chapters 4 and 5

Welcome back to my reread of K.B. Wagers' "A Pale Light in the Black!"  You can find the other posts in this reread here.  For the last time since I started this reread, let me once again make the case that if you haven't already, you should pick up this book for reading since we're in the middle of a pandemic keeping everyone home.  It features an optimistic world, recovered from a dim global catastrophe, as well as a group of people come together as family (with people of all genders and sexual orientations totally welcome), and - as might be important for many of you who follow me - features at its heart what's really a sporting competition - and I know I'm missing those a ton already.  It's a hell of a lot of fun, so I think many of you would enjoy following along with me for the ride.

Last time, we saw the crew of Zuma's Ghost in action, with Nika and Jenks leading a boarding action of a mysterious "system jumper", a hundred years out of date, hanging where it was not supposed to be, and took down 5 sketchy characters they found onboard - one of whom even tried to bribe Jenks.  It did not turn out well for him.

This time, we meet the last of our main characters, Lieutenant Maxine "Max" Carmichael.  She's fantastic.....

Chapter 4: T-Minus Fifteen Weeks Until Prelim Boarding Games:

Quick Summary: Meet Max Carmichael, Lieutenant in the NeoG who just graduated from her Interceptor Course and is assigned to Zuma's Ghost.  Max's family is famous for the LifeEx serum which extends human life and makes space travel possible, but the rest of the family has all gone into either Navy or Corporate Service for the Family Business, and Max's NeoG enrollment has made her an outcast.  Fittingly for someone so awkward at fitting in, Max doesn't take the usual Navy transport to get to Jupiter Station, but a commercial freighter and gets there two days early, right as Nika and Rosa are debriefing about the System Jumper mission.

Chapter 5:

Quick Summary:  Awkward and Uncomfortable, Max immediately gets in the way of a Navy Lieutenant, but doesn't get into a fight thanks to some quick intervention.  Max is introduced to Nika who decides to show him around, since Max is replacing Nika on the team, something they haven't announced to the others yet.  Nika at first misinterprets Max's uncomfortableness/awkwardness as being straight laced, but is surprised at the fact Max took a freighter to the station.....and by the attractiveness of Max's pretty eyes.....

Thoughts:   Meet Max!  I love Max, and I suspect most of you will too - she's the closest thing we get to a main character in this book, even if we're just meeting her now.  Nika mistakes Max first as being straight laced, but Max is far from the "by the book" officer from a buddy cop movie (with Jenks presumably being the rogue partner in such a movie lol). She's just desperate to fit in somewhere and lonely, after her family basically abandoned her, outside of two siblings, and even those siblings seemed to side with her parents at the infamous dinner.  I can't imagine my family abandoning me at a dinner, nevertheless at a public place for all to see, but Max's family problems may not be as uncommon to others.  We'll get to know her a lot better as the book goes on and she learns to fit in with the team.

Oh and we learn some really cool new things about the setting here.  Not only about LifeEx, which ensures that everyone can live a lot longer in the future, even if most people have to enter some sort of government or corporate service to get it (reminds me of employer-insurance which we have in the US, which sucks, even if LifeEx being tied to the government makes it a bit better), but also about how the DD Chips identify people.  Namely, they tag each person with their name, title, and preferred gender!  So clearly, misgendering people is a thing of the past in this future, as this takes having your pronouns in your twitter profile to a new level.  Hard to believe given the attitude we see today about such things from certain people, but again, this is a future we can hope for....and we'll see more of that later.