Books: A Talent For War by Jack McDevitt (1988)

“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.