Review: Don't judge the series by just this book - it gets better
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 20, 2014
The Wandering Engineer series in total is a decent read; this New Dawn book is a bit different than the rest.  This book switches context a lot and gets mired down in minutiae without much action - and not in a good way like Nathan Lowell's Trader's Tales series (which is shockingly good, BTW).  But it does set up the rest of the series and it gets better from here on.  I think the author's writing improves over the course of the series, except for Plague Planet which can be skipped without missing anything.As an engineer I was actually a bit annoyed by some things in this book and others in the series.  Civilization had progressed enough to have replicators, AI, stasis pods, and FTL travel, but was still using USB ports for connectivity?? Really? And WiFi was only getting a few Mbps?? Really?  We have more than that now, and it's constantly increasing.  The odd mix of current tech with future tech is inconsistent and detracts from the sci-fi aspect.