Review: Hechtl continues to improve, but ...
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 15, 2013
I just finished the new episode in the Engineer universe and am feeling mixed over my reaction.In many respects this is the best work we have seen from the author to date. His editing process has hit its stride and very very few mistakes in tense or grammar were noticeable in my readthrough. We also saw a sharp decrease in the repetition of phrases and backstory throughout the novel. It felt much more polished and seamless in its continuation of Admiral Iron's tale.All that being said there still were some execution issues that bugged me in the book. I think the first thing is the blatant use of familiar characters (both name and description) used as stock for the various side personalities and settings in the novel. I honestly don't mind an author using the public knowledge-base and stereotypes to type-cast but this went a little to far. I would think Mr. Hechtl would at least change names around slightly to prevent any type of cease and desist actions. From a readers perspective the names were so familiar and recognizable that when I first ran across them it immediately threw me out of the carefully built world the story was setting.I also felt that Mr. Hechtl is starting to focus and lose sight of the possibilities the sheer scope of his story allows him to play in. For the most part we have seen vaguely early-American cultures on the various Dark Age cultures (or at least thats they way they feel to me). Granted he has done some good work with the genie populations to bring in an outsider culture but their is so much else he can pull from I am surprised we don't hear more about some other societies.I also think he is starting to make the nanos into something of a Dues Ex Machia (see spoiler section later for cause). I am also surprised that after the last books effort to round out and grow Sprite, that in general the AI characters were left very much on the sidelines. Granted the setting was vastly different but I am a little disappointed that the effort spent to round-out our Commander was left to plateau in this book.Overall the story was an interesting little addition to the series but it showed improvement more in the writing than in the story arc. BUT AS I STATED PREVIOUSLY THE SERIES IS EASILY WORTH THE FEW DOLLARS for both its scope and general quality.SpoilersSpoilersSpoilersMr. Hechtl reached a little too far in what he is allowing the good Admiral to accomplish with his implants. I realize that the system was new to Irons and that in this new time he needs to find solutions. However it seems that if so many workarounds are being found I don't see how it is that everything could be this bad in the first place. If so many of the key's/AI limitations can be overcome by legal passing of laws I just don't see how things could devolve so fast. All of these planets had a so called planetary governor and probably working tech at the start. If they can just authorize things as being allowed for an emergency it doesn't make sense. The way we were suddenly told that the law allowing the use of nanites to essentially duplicate the classified system for Iron's protection implemented across a planet's entire population sat very poorly with me.I also am disappointed that the Defender crisis didn't progress at all. We keep seeing hints that the AI is unstable in some way and yet throughout the entire crises it just faded into the background. Is Mr. Hechtl trying to figure himself out of a corner?The discovery of the human aquatic genies was another effort that I thought poorly done. If we knew that they existed previously (which was implied) and that everyone has been looking for a superior pilot from such a species surely they would have been tested already. I mean it's obviously a subset of the population but the military sounded so stretched that surely they would have pursued the possibility. I think it is another one of those instances that showcase the fog of information about the general state of the Federation and Xeno era that isn't explained well at all. We need a little more information on why such a distributed democratic government seemed so authoritarian in its power and control. Was it simply the Navy that allowed it to keep such a firm grasp of the keys? And if so surely there was some remnant of the Navy left after the wars what happened to it? I doubt with the AI ships and implant controls that a fractured war for control was even possible. I realize that the series started as a What if project but the further we go the larger these plot points seem in my estimation.I also think it was implied that it might have been the pirates using the Xeno plague sleepers against such a strong industrialized world. If that is the case how did they get to the pods in the first place if they truly had mechanical nano tech. From what I understood the cryo pods wouldn't stop that for long the program would find someway to stay active. I doubt the ship would have survived completely decontaminated unless they had a Xeno set of keys somehow.Either way I'm hoping for another story soon, but it sounds like Mr. Hechtl has quite a few irons in the fire and it might be some time until the next story.gallandro