(2006)Another good story with Priscilla ?Hutch? Hutchins as the head of the ?Academy? that controls most interstellar flights. Sightings of ?ufos? spawns concerns that we are being attacked by aliens. Two incidents imply that this has happened only to learn that it is a corporate conspiracy to build up space defense spending. Then a real attack catches everybody off guard as the aliens try to stop a dangerous scientific project that could cause the destruction of the universe.Booklist:Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchinson's fifth adventure opens with the former starship pilot deskbound at the Academy (the twenty-third-century equivalent of NASA), which is facing catastrophic cuts to the space program. In a media campaign led by Hutch's old friend, acerbic newspaper editor Gregory MacAllister, pundits and politicians alike argue that the program's money would be better spent on the earthbound threats of global warming and disease. Perhaps not coincidentally, humans everywhere from Earth to Ophiuchi begin witnessing repeated visitations from "moonriders" (apparently alien spherical spacecraft), and they prompt an Academy investigative mission. To humor Hutch and grab a good story, MacAllister joins a spacebound team including a celebrated pilot and a senator's daughter. When the moonriders apparently redirect a few asteroids to destroy an orbiting hotel and narrowly bypass Earth, suspicions begin to emerge that the moonriders--and certain members of the Academy--may not be what they seem to be. McDevitt's energetic, character-driven prose serves double duty by exploring Earth's future political climate and forecasting the potential dangers awaiting humanity among the stars.

A reasonable entry in the Priscilla Hutchins series and a step up from Omega. As usual, far-future space opera with interstellar travel, and everything else is 1980s -- people still do book tours and go on TV talk shows. Politics is unchanged without a hint of social media operations. There's some science in the physics and such, but this is extrapolation-free SF. The puzzle this time are the mysterious moonriders who appear to be hurling asteroids at human space operations they don't like.

Recommended if you've read and liked other McDevitt novels. ( )

The adventure aspect of the book was minimal. There was a lot of politics and social commentary that, to be fair, turned out to be very important to the story told. It all hangs together well. The politics and social commentary reflect things as they are today even though events take place 200 years in the future. The greenhouse effect is an accepted fact but no one is really doing anything still. People are moving north and away from the coasts, that's all. No huge programs of carbon sequestration or orbital mirrors or umbrellas. Faster than light travel is possible but the budgets for space exploration are getting cut. Politicians want to eliminate them totally. A giant super-collider has been built (in space, not Switzerland). People are ignorant of science and steeped in religion. They complain about science programs, the cost and how come they cannot warn people of a near miss by an asteroid? There are also worries by some people that the supercollider might create miniature black holes or destroy space-time, just like there were fears about the Broookhaven lab a few years ago. Overall, nothing new for anyone who reads today's newspapers until the last 50 pages or so. Not the best Jack McDevitt book but maybe the most "socially conscious" or "relevant". I would read some of his other books again. Not this one. ( )

Summary: The Academy is running out of money. In the meantime, MacAllister, a senator's daughter, a pilot, and a PR guy from the Academy are on a tour looking for UFOs because reasons. Eventually the find some (ish), the daughter gets contacted by aliens (maybe, no one believes her at first and it's never really explained), and a bunch of people die.

As with a few other books in this series, it takes half the book to get to what feels like the main plot point, with a massive acceleration in the last 15% and a final climax in the last 5%. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it just felt a lot more obvious in this book.

Especially when half the book it feels like is spent talking about how the Academy isn't getting funded any more (mirroring NASA and other modern day space programs) and an oddly large amount of the second half on a trial about a guy who went to a religious school, grew up, and punched a priest. I still haven't figured out where that came from.

That being said, I still enjoy the universe that McDevitt has built here. The universe actually feels big and the technology feels right. I want to believe that life will be more common than he paints it, but if it's not, this feels like how the universe might just be.

Once again, I hope the next book has a few more answers (we still don't know what the Omegas are and now there's a real current alien race?), but given the previous four and that #6 is the last book currently out... We'll see.

ETA: The book opens with a ship 'lost' in space because it didn't go nearly as far as it should have, despite the physicists saying that shouldn't be possible. Yet that particular weirdness is dropped and never mentioned again in favor of the 'retire the old ships because funding plot'. Weird. ( )

Oh, where to start. There are plot gaps. Then it turns out one of the plot gaps was maybe intentional, but the plug doesn't fit the gap so now there are one more plot gap.

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