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Last Christmas holidays I read Omega by Jack McDevitt because I failed to notice this bit on the blurb:

The tale - begun almost a decade ago in The Engines of God - continues…

If I’d known it was the fourth book in a series then I wouldn’t have read it first. But I did and now I’m not sure whether to muddle through the whole series in the wrong order. But getting back to The Engines of God. First of all, don’t expect complex characters and human relationships. Even though the main character throughout the series, Pricilla Hutchins, is a woman, that typical male sci fi writer cringeworthy type writing still slips through. For example

Linda Thomas was a redheaded dynamo who knew what she was doing… (p17)

Cal had seemed fairly dull when she’d first met him… But he’d touched her in some primal way so that she knew, whatever happened tonight, she’d never be the same. (p24)

But McDevitt is still very readable. His plots are intriguing and his strength lies in the sci fi element of his stories which is what you want when you’re reading sci fi. This book begins with a dying earth and a plan to terraform the planet Quaraqua

‘Caseway thinks the only solution is to move a small, well-educated, well-trained group to a place like Quaraqua, and start over. I’m inclined to agree with him that the world is a lost cause. But I don’t think human nature will change just because we send out a contingent with sheepskins.”

Terraforming the planet will forever destroy archaeological artifacts left behind by the previous inhabitants who have all mysteriously disappeared. There are a number of mysterious ‘monuments’ orbiting other plants in the Orion Arm, including strange cities that aren’t really cities at all. As the archaeologists try to find out more about the Monument-Makers, things start to go belly up

In short you have a female Indiana Jones in charge of a spaceship. There’s danger, excitement, and some really nasty crab things. A good read