At the end of last book Chase Kolpath and Alex Benedict found out that the missing ships were stuck in space/time warps and this book starts with humanity trying to figure out how to get the ships out. One of those ships have Gabe, Alex' uncle in whose house he lives, and whose fortune and spaceship and pilot (Chase) he is using for his business.

But Alex also has another mission. Someone has uncovered a single artefact from an old Earth museum that was thought lost in the dark ages. And if there is one, maybe the whole museum is still around, so off to Earth we go. An earth completely changed by 6000 years and climate change and massively rising oceans.

It's a fair book. Nothing special. The story is as always told in a slightly detached way. ( )

I'm such a big fan of McDevitt's Alex Benedict series, and I highly recommend them for anyone who loves space opera. This one did not disappoint! ( )

Alex Benedict is back in the seventh book of the series by SF writer Jack McDevitt. Readers of the series are aware that the books are set in the far future,9000 years. Given that fact,lurking in the background, are two questions. What does the timeline look like and the additional question of whether mankind has been able to hang on to the history and knowledge accumulated over the centuries. In this book some of those questions are answered. The author writes of the collapse of the digital age and the resulting loss of knowledge because of everything being digitized. And with answered questions come even more questions. The Earth of the future has been altered due to ecological damage, the United States is a memory, as is the use of English. Sharp-eyed readers of the previous novels are aware of this and other facts. In this story Alex and Chase are looking into the disappearance of artifacts from the early days of Space Exploration, at the same time becoming involved in an attempt to rescue a 'lost' starliner. For all the changes that Humankind has experienced, the novel still points to the feuding and disagreements that are a part of life. I highly recommend this series to all readers of SF, newcomers and those who have been reading the genre for years. Hopefully this will not be the last book in the series. ( )

This series continues to be a solid and consistent read. There are several plotlines going on simultaneously, with one picking up on the spaceship rescues from those outside of time, including relationship angst for Chase, and also the delightful return to Sol.

Of course, a return to the Earth and our solar system is roughly on par to returning to Sumeria a few thousand years from now to try and figure out, from scratch, what those people were like.

It's really a shame that humanity had a breakdown about 5k years go and anything that wasn't written in stone was lost, or else this little job of trying to figure out what a cell phone is or how the cradle of civilization had gotten to the moon in the first place would have been a much easier proposition.

Ah, but our favorite characters *do* have tidbits and hints from the diligent work of previous archeologists, at least, and some names have passed through 9k years relatively intact, the God Einstein not being one of those intact personages. ;)

Still, it's fun uncovering our present and our near future through the very distant eyes of these characters, thereby becoming a wonderful mirror to ourselves trying to figure out Sumerian culture or architecture from the scant clues that are left to us. The idea that our pasts, including what we might call our pre-written history, might actually be nothing of the sort.

Things fall apart. We could have come from a very advanced past, outgrowing so many kinds of needs, but even if they had all made things to last, the fact is: This is a Very Long Time. Nothing lasts. We just cannot know.

I feel pity for Alex and Chase, but pride in the fact that they're trying.

This is a very thoughtful novel. Not so exciting as some of the previous ones, but being thoughtful is good, too. :) ( )

Coming Home

This was a good story and it even tied in with the other novels of Jack McDevitt. In fact, there is a scene where Chase wonders if she would like the fictional character Hutchins (also a McDevitt invention in the Priscilla Hutchins series).

Two stories are going on at the same time. Gabe, Alex’s uncle who we thought dead was actually lost in a time warp in an interstellar ship. It’s due to “surface” to our time in a few months. While they make preparations for his possible return, Alex also is investigating the discovery of an old transmitter from the early centuries of spaceflight. With the granddaughter of the discoverer’s help, Alex and Chase go all over the place to find where this transmitter came from, hoping that it will lead to the treasure of Apollo artifacts thought lost centuries ago during the Dark Ages.

OK, this story does give us a view of our possible future, with economic collapses, a future dark ages that last centuries, the countries formerly known as the USA and Russia dissolve, and a benign universal government, the Confederacy of worlds, is further described and detailed.

The story has some harrowing escapes, a death threat and Chase not getting a boyfriend. You know, the usual McDevitt tale.

I recommend it, especially because the author links his earlier tales all the way back to the original A Talent for War.


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