“Everyone knows the legend of
Christopher Sim. An interstellar hero with a rare talent for war, he changed
mankind's history forever when he forged a rag-tag group of misfits into the
weapon that broke the alien Ashiyyur. But now, in a forgotten file, Alex
Benedict has found a startling piece of information. If it is true, then
Christopher Sim was a fraud. If he is to see it through, Alex Benedict will
have to follow the dark track of a legend, into the heart of an alien galaxy,
where he will confront a truth far stranger than anything he could have
imagined.”
The Talent for War is set
9,600 years into our future, where human civilization has spread through a
substantial part of the Orion Arm of our galaxy. It’s the first of the Alex
Benedict series and plays out like a hard science fiction novel with a mystery
at its core. This novel is also concerned with a battle two centuries earlier,
which helps fill in the backstory of this universe author Jack McDevitt has
created.
It’s a bit prosaic, old style
science fiction novel, with its own unique perspective on first contact with
aliens. The first-person narrative is a bit distracting, as Alex comes off a
bit self-centered, and with a bunch of supporting characters being a bit
underwritten. Still, the whole historical research, the archeological mysteries
that need to be solved works. It reads like anyone who is doing research into
the past, with its dead ends, papers and memoirs (got to say our future
ancestors did a hell of a lot of writing, considering our current ages
obsession with videoing everything we do).
I’m
guessing that McDevitt’s choice of using Greek Myths as the backbone of tale is
designed for readers to invest their time in those old tomes. It does feel a
bit like an Odyssey we’re on.
No comments:
Post a Comment