I finished Engineer while on my trip to Orlando and my expectations were non existent after reading Captain. Maybe that’s why I didn’t completely hate it? It stop isn’t what I would consider good, and a few things jump out to me now that there’s been two books with these characters now.
He just doesn’t do 1st person well. Varic is already a dumb character with a whole built in deus ex machina built around him. It is entirely at the convenience of the plot whether or not he knows how to win based on all the lives he’s lived and the shared experiences. Writing him in 1st person he just comes off as an asshole. I think in third person there would be some mystery left up to the reader, instead he constantly pulls out crap like “Well I had prepared exactly for this situation because you see in my fourth life when I was also amazing and I was this guy’s best friend one Friday night he told me all his secrets!”
Secondly, even after two books I have to pay attention to who is speaking because virtually all the characters are identical except for whatever their power or position is. Omega is the only one with a unique speech pattern and characteristic, and even that is really just “crazy.” In Cradle everyone had a unique voice. Here there’s a starship full of different species and backgrounds and abilities, and they all make the same jokes, use the same sarcasm, and same vocabulary. It just isn’t interesting.
Lastly, the plot is not tight at all, even though this book did bring in a little more to the overall world building. There’s still things like the side mission Varic took to save his students that lasted all of 5 paragraphs, he brings them back to Last Horizon, then locks them in a room and we never hear from them for the remainder of 40% of the book. Huh? There was other stuff related to Steelhamner and Mel that was similar.
Another one is suppose to be out soon. Knight. They aren’t hard to read so I’ll probably read it too and complain here.