FBC Mini Review:

Since I have read A Talent for War in the early 90's I have been a big Jack McDevitt fan and his subsequent novels mostly worked out very well for me with the Academy series being a huge highlight opened by the superb The Engines of God which alongside A Talent for War still ranks in my highly recommended list of A++ sf novels.

Here are the opening lines of A Talent for War that made my list of memorable first lines and note the mystery and sense of history they exude:

THE AIR WAS heavy with incense and the sweet odor of hot wax.
Cam Chulohn loved the plain stone chapel. He knelt on the hard bench and watched the crystal water dribble across Father Curry's fingers into the silver bowl held by the postulant. The timeless symbol of man's effort to evade responsibility, it had always seemed to Chulohn the most significant of all the ancient rituals. There, he thought, is the essence of our nature, displayed endlessly throughout the ages for all who can see.

His gaze lingered in turn on the Virgin's Alcove (illuminated by a few flickering candles) and the Stations of the Cross, on the simple altar, on the hewn pulpit with its ponderous Bible. It was modest by the opulent standards of Rimway and Rigel III and Taramingo. But somehow the magnificence of the architecture in those sprawling cathedrals, the exquisite quality of the stained glass windows, the satisfying bulk of marble columns, the sheer angelic power of the big organs, the sweeping choir lofts: it all got in the way. Here, halfway up a mountainside, he could look out over the river valley that the early fathers, in a burst of enthusiasm, had dedicated to St. Anthony of Toxicon. There was only the river, and the ridges, and the Creator.

So when Mr. McDevitt returned to the world of Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath in Polaris, I was quite apprehensive as the mysterious far future of A Talent for War did not quite seem suitable for too much exploration. Still in Polaris, Seeker and The Devil's Eye (FBC Rv) the superb storytelling skills of the author managed to suspend my disbelief in an universe that while set some 10 thousand years in the future, looked not unlike the homogenous middle class US of the 50's with a few - but not that many either - new gadgets around. A sort of retro future sf which I heartily dislike in general as I think it has had its expiration date a long time ago.

When the author turned his hand to a light but ultra-fun time travel story in Time Travelers Never Die (FBC Rv), I hoped that Alex and Chase have been retired at the top, but it was not to be and last year's Echo just brought my suspension of disbelief to a crash in a novel that while readable - again as a testimony to how mesmerizing the author can be - was utterly laughable in world building from beginning to almost the end.

So this year's Firebird has been a very low expectation novel for me but I opened it and this time the story took over from maybe page 50 on and I turned the pages and enjoyed it till the end.

There are the usual McDevitt touches - Alex and Chase investigating, the blind alleys, the mysterious enemies, the stunning discovery - but this time the big picture of the universe is involved and it works much better than in Echo; the ending made me hope that Firebird is the last novel in this series since the author is way too good a storyteller not to have a better and more up-to-date tale to regale us with.