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Book Review: Seeker by Jack McDevitt
Print date: 2005 (20s: 1, 60s: 2, 70s: 1, 80s: 3, 90s: 3, 00s: 5)
This is a classic case of overblown cover copy-- "a novel of big ideas" indeed. The book is competent and fun, but it's hardly revolutionary; the kind of thing that would make a reasonable movie but no one will have heard of in twenty years. There were exactly two ideas I'd never seen before, but they were both riffs on existing themes and not anything entirely original.
Probably the best moment in the book comes very near the beginning of the book in one of the chapter-heading pseudo-quotations. The book is set far enough in the future that when they look back at the first star-liners it's the same gap in time as us looking at the pyramids. It gave a real sense of scale to things, which is something that McDevitt keeps coming back to throughout the book. He's very good about keeping that global perspective, of making sure that we know just how rare and small life is even after we've colonized the stars.
Plot-wise it's a mystery/road movie which means that the pacing is strong, although perceptive readers will probably figure out where the mystery is going twenty pages ahead at any given time. Character-wise it's a little weak in places, especially with the villains. And yes, I'm using the word "villains" in the classical sense: murderous crazy people, not people with fleshed out motivations. One of them basically comes out of left field 80% of the way through the book and is never really given a good reason for being there; the other betrays the main characters in a turn that feels like it should have included megalomaniacal laughter and possibly a cape thrown back over a shoulder. Also of note, the main character is a woman written by a man who's playing a little too close to the stereotypes. Chase as an abstraction is fine, but in the actual text she wasn't given enough non-stereotypical character to counterbalance the repetitions of "I'm going to make generalizations about all women in a vaguely apologetic way."
I enjoyed the book and (again) I wasn't expecting to, but it just isn't awesome enough to sit on my shelf forever with C.S. Friedman and Guy Gavriel Kay. It was fun, I regret nothing. Next?
Verdict: Worth reading once, will recycle. (8/20 keepers)
Page count: 373 (5533 total)
Completed: 15 (7 female authors, 8 male authors)
Rejected: 5 (4 male authors, 1 female authors)
Next book due: 5/21
This is a classic case of overblown cover copy-- "a novel of big ideas" indeed. The book is competent and fun, but it's hardly revolutionary; the kind of thing that would make a reasonable movie but no one will have heard of in twenty years. There were exactly two ideas I'd never seen before, but they were both riffs on existing themes and not anything entirely original.
Probably the best moment in the book comes very near the beginning of the book in one of the chapter-heading pseudo-quotations. The book is set far enough in the future that when they look back at the first star-liners it's the same gap in time as us looking at the pyramids. It gave a real sense of scale to things, which is something that McDevitt keeps coming back to throughout the book. He's very good about keeping that global perspective, of making sure that we know just how rare and small life is even after we've colonized the stars.
Plot-wise it's a mystery/road movie which means that the pacing is strong, although perceptive readers will probably figure out where the mystery is going twenty pages ahead at any given time. Character-wise it's a little weak in places, especially with the villains. And yes, I'm using the word "villains" in the classical sense: murderous crazy people, not people with fleshed out motivations. One of them basically comes out of left field 80% of the way through the book and is never really given a good reason for being there; the other betrays the main characters in a turn that feels like it should have included megalomaniacal laughter and possibly a cape thrown back over a shoulder. Also of note, the main character is a woman written by a man who's playing a little too close to the stereotypes. Chase as an abstraction is fine, but in the actual text she wasn't given enough non-stereotypical character to counterbalance the repetitions of "I'm going to make generalizations about all women in a vaguely apologetic way."
I enjoyed the book and (again) I wasn't expecting to, but it just isn't awesome enough to sit on my shelf forever with C.S. Friedman and Guy Gavriel Kay. It was fun, I regret nothing. Next?
Verdict: Worth reading once, will recycle. (8/20 keepers)
Page count: 373 (5533 total)
Completed: 15 (7 female authors, 8 male authors)
Rejected: 5 (4 male authors, 1 female authors)
Next book due: 5/21