Very weak writing, a much weaker book than Chindi, despite Chindi's failure to deliver. This one fails to deliver too. The last 5 pages should have been at least half of the book. The female characters are ridiculous and the relations between men and women are silly. ( )

I got this book because I'm trying to read award winning Sci-Fi. While the book has some good elements, such as the well-researched sounding bits about stars and astronomy, the story, character, world building, lagged. Some scenes were easily recognized as trips to the airport and vacations in 20th century North America. The Nebula Award set up expectations that this book could not live up to. ( )

Now I'll have to read the other books in the series. I'm impressed by McDevitt..this book, and "Infinity Beach", demonstrate him as a first-rate detective writer. With an entire galaxy to frame his stories he has enough room for creating some decently complex and intriguing tales. It's also interesting that he tends to assign fairly unprepossessing women as protagonists. A throw-away character asks for an estimate on an old mug and sets in motion a quest for a 9,000 year old utopian settlement deemed to have been lost in space. To add to the tension there's a group of anti-souvenir fanatics that are willing to kill in order to stop the poaching of historical artifacts. Clues and some pretty impressive deductions, and a few lucky guesses, guide the heroes to find the end of this multi-millennial mystery. Every time they find enough to end the search, they find a reason to continue beyond the end such that the story continues after some brief respites in the action. ( )

This is the third of the Alex Benedict books. Alex Benedict is an antiquity dealer some 9,000 years into the future, in a world where humanity is spread across the galaxy. Those 9,000 years (or more) have not been without trouble and there are a fair amount of lost records and mysteries to investigate.

In Seeker Benedict gets his hands on a plastic mug that seems to come from a 9,000 year old spaceship. Trying to find out more about it, it becomes both a mystery and a thriller, as someone seems willing to use extreme violence to prevent Benedict from reaching his goal.

I like the way these Alex Benedict books are told by his companion, Chase Kolpath. I know it's not a new idea in a mystery novel with sub prominent examples as Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes, Hastings and Hercule Poirot and even Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey, but it does seem less common nowadays.

There are also a few explanations in this book to why technology seems to have made steps backwards since today. Not really enough, but I am ok with the anachronisms. Who knows, maybe this is from a different timeline than the one I live in? (You can get away with a lot in Science Fiction). ( )

Good Grief. I just lost my review.

Here's a summary, alas.

'06 Nebula winner, equal parts Space Opera and Noir Mystery, but that really translates mostly into Future History Archeology, with a treasure-hunting bent, twists and turns, lots of interesting characters, and lost spacecraft and lost colonies.

Was I really happy about the last twist and the epilogue? Hell yes.

All this takes place about 10k in the future, but there's a legend of a lost colony gone 9k ago before the advent of FTL travel or communications, and it's the subject of much attention and drama. Atlantis, anyone? Well what happens when weird things start showing up, crazy mysteries get unearthed, and our favorite team get involved in the hunt?

It's a mystery! Most of the fun is all in the reveals and the character interactions, and I'll be honest, I like Chase better as the narrator because she just might be smarter than the titular MC who's getting kinda pushed out of his own series. :) It's not a bad alteration. :) She's a tough Noir investigator.

I'm having a lot of fun with these novels! It's pretty much the most fun I've had with archeology novels I've had, but perhaps that's because I just haven't read the right ones. Still, I love the mix with Space Opera. :) ( )