Review: Back in Focus...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 27, 2013
The Wandering Engineer series has been fun so far, with a very different hero than usual space opera story lines. No left over Special Forces action hero here or silly betrayals by one's superiors; and no scientist with a brain the size of a planet either. The hero - John Irons - is an engineer, a statis pod survivor from a war that destroyed the Federation to which he once belonged.The stories are told with a firm grasp of engineering as a major plank of the stories - unusual enough to be interesting in its own right.Of the stories in the series to date, I've enjoyed this one the most.  The enemy this time is Irons old foes the Xeno, or more correctly, a left over Xeno nano-war plague that threatens to destroy all life on the world he's on.Irons wins this round and wins well - and does it in an interesting and engaging fashion. This is a great change from the series so far. My one real beef to date has been Hechtl relentless undermining of Irons as a credible leader. This was Ok in book two (setting up the plot and a long term conflict line), but in Ghost Station as well?Not this time. In this story Irons performs and performs well. He has an end goal in sight and stays focused on it.Other good points?  In earlier books  Hechtl undermined his readers suspension of disbelief  by references to modern pop culture that jarred with the story being told. Previous books were `serious' and the references simply didn't fit the tone and storey line.This time Hechtl goes all with his references,  but in Plague World these references aren't an interruption of the story he's telling, rather they're  a deliberate feature of the storyline.  Plaque World and its characters are a deliberate and open mishmash of popular TV programmes and comic books, especially the Dukes of Hazard, Magnum PI, Batman and the Xmen.I found myself grinning as I read them and some elicited the old chuckle or two. All in all they were nicely done by the writer and this time the tone matched the outcome.So where does Plague World fit in the Wandering Engineer to date? My feeling is its  probably meant as side-line from the main series, but I think it's more than that - suddenly the Wandering Engineer series  seems back on line and Iron's, Sprite and co are back to the promise showed in book 1.One minor point - the last few chapters seemed rushed. The ending is great, but I did get the feel that Hechtl was in dire of a break.So well done and yes, I'll certainly be back to read the next instalment. All in all a fun book and a good read.Four stars.