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A review by markyon
Chindi by Jack McDevitt
4.0
This one's been sat on the shelf for a while.
McDevitt has a reputation for solid old-fashioned SF, with an emphasis on plot rather than characterisation. His work reminds me of the SF being published (and I was reading!) back in the 1980's.
This is pretty much that.
Where McDevitt scores is in developing that 'sensawunder' for the reader, so reminiscent to me of the Analogs and Astoundings of years gone by. Here we have long dead aliens and their cultural remains uncovered, underneath a sky with not just one but two ringed planets.
We travel on vast empty alien spaceships, whose purpose and occupants remain enigmatic.
The pages turned very nicely, with situation after situation being piled on to ratchet up the tension.
On the downside the events did become a little bit far-fetched at times, especially towards the end. McDevitt gets a little too over-emotional at times, in what is both a love story and a love of technology, and as a result lets the emotion override the logic. At other times things do seem to be solved a little too conveniently in a book that is in that true tradition of problem-solving SF.
And yet, despite all this, despite the cliched and rather thin characterisation, despite the fact that you knew what was going to happen, this was a real page turner that was difficult to put down.
McDevitt has a reputation for solid old-fashioned SF, with an emphasis on plot rather than characterisation. His work reminds me of the SF being published (and I was reading!) back in the 1980's.
This is pretty much that.
Where McDevitt scores is in developing that 'sensawunder' for the reader, so reminiscent to me of the Analogs and Astoundings of years gone by. Here we have long dead aliens and their cultural remains uncovered, underneath a sky with not just one but two ringed planets.
We travel on vast empty alien spaceships, whose purpose and occupants remain enigmatic.
The pages turned very nicely, with situation after situation being piled on to ratchet up the tension.
On the downside the events did become a little bit far-fetched at times, especially towards the end. McDevitt gets a little too over-emotional at times, in what is both a love story and a love of technology, and as a result lets the emotion override the logic. At other times things do seem to be solved a little too conveniently in a book that is in that true tradition of problem-solving SF.
And yet, despite all this, despite the cliched and rather thin characterisation, despite the fact that you knew what was going to happen, this was a real page turner that was difficult to put down.