In the second of Chris Wooding’s series of standalone adventures featuring the dysfunctional crew of the barely functioning aircraft the Ketty Jay, we are treated to more of the same kind of page-turning, larger-then-life techno-piratical adventures as we experienced in the first book, Retribution Falls. Having assembled a crew who could just about tolerate one another in the first book, and managed to make a certain amount of profit in the process, Captain Darian Frey is by the start of Black Lung Captain back in his default state, that is, down on his luck. An encounter with the brutal Captain Grist, who has a second-rate explorer in tow, sees Frey enlisting his crew in a venture to recover treasure from a downed aircraft hidden in the jungle.

Cue adventures: double-crosses, running battles with ape-men, discoveries that the crashed aircraft is much more than expected. Grist, the Black Lung Captain of the title, knows far more about their intended objective than Frey, and much energy then has to be expended pursuing him around the planet when his motives become clear, with Frey by now allied with his ex-fiance-turned-pirate Trinica Drakken, captain of the feared Delirium Trigger.

Along the way, we learn more about Frey and his crew – including the true nature of undead navigator Jez, and more about taciturn engineer Silo. Things come close to deteriorating among the crew – Jez’s origins, Crake’s alcohol-sodden guilt, Pinn’s lovesickness and Harkins’ morbid fear of the ship’s cat being just some of the aggravating factors – yet by the end Jess has not only achieved true acceptance but Harkins has conquered the cat and the Ketty Jay has even had an overhaul – Frey has the best crew he could hope for, greater than the sum of its hang-ups. We also get some mesmerising aerial combat sequences, and genuine emotional depth from the scoundrel captain Frey, who turns down a future of wealth and privelege with a woman he doesn’t really love, only to discover feelings for someone who keeps betraying him.

Black Lung Captain is a wonderful, uncomplicated and well-paced piece of soft science fiction adventure – and although it’s part of a series, could happily be read as a standalone novel with no prior knowledge. Wooding’s world-building is not too shabby either, and with the revelations about the Mane and the suggestion of war in the air, there is clearly plenty that Wooding can build on his future novels. I hope that there are many of them – there’s obviously plenty of life in the Ketty Jay, even if you don’t count the rats in the hold.

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