As a recently promoted Ensign, Engineer Athena Lee finds herself a survivor of the battle between the Pan-Pacific League and the Anglican Alliance. However, as everyone else had left the Diablo asteroid area, she is stranded and alone with no means of telling the rest of the universe she is still alive. On the positive side, she has the remains of two war fleets and a recently created asteroid base, so it is time for her to do what she loves best. Engineering. But the outcome of the action at Diablo had been so dreadful, that the two sides involved had immediately gone to the negotiation table. From it came the new Empire of Humanity and now, fifteen years later, one it’s ships, the EOH Prosperous, is now sent to see what was left of the Diablo area. What is was not expecting to find was a fully armed asteroid base built from the wreckage and an Ensign who still thinks the war has not ended. When one of the ships decides to ignore Athena’s warnings and flies directly into a minefield, the tensions are raised as both sides try to work out their next steps and avoid further bloodshed.

The Forgotten Engineer is an amusing sci-fi novella introducing Athena Lee who finds herself alone and so builds her own space station from the wreckage of the battle. The writing style mixes sci-fi and humour making for an enjoyable and light-hearted read following the situation. This could easily have been a hard and gritty story, but the writing operates with a light touch and it’s a pleasure to see the trials and tribulations of Athena as well as her encounters with the fleet after fifteen years. The story cleverly cuts back and forth in time, from the original battle to the current time, and then back to periods when the base is being built allowing the reader to see the progression of the base and show parts of it being created instead of just having to accept being told about it. The characters positivity in the face of the bleak situation helps keep the tone light and when they do interact, it’s good to see that talking is more preferable to fighting following on the message the book is giving. Aside from a few spelling errors, the book is well formatted and the switching back and forth helps to build up a great picture of Athena’s survival over time.

The main complaint I do have is the head hopping between the characters that sometimes occurs from sentence to sentence. There are also some quick references dropped in for the Art of War and Hagakure without any real reason or setup, which left me wondering why they are mentioned.

Overall, this was a fun read that I certainly enjoyed reading it, the light hearted tone helping to bounce the story along. If you like this there are several more in the series to pick up and follow, with a taster of the next book at the end following directly on from where this one finishes.