"Fun futuristic thriller"

Amy Kohler shows antiques dealer Alex Benedict a decorated cup with an eagle and strange language etched onto it. Alex looks up the language and says it is Mid-American English last used in the third millennium. Amy is stunned that she possesses an artifact that is nine thousand years old, but Alex says it is probably recent with just an ancient inscription though he has no idea outside of academia who would use a dead language like English especially on a cup.

As he looks closer at the relic, Alex becomes convinced that the cup is from the mythical space vessel the Seeker that legend says along with the Bremerhaven transported 5,000 expatriates from the religious intolerance of the twenty-seventh century United States. They supposedly founded a colony on the planet, Margolia, but no one ever heard from the colonists again so they are part of the mythos. Alex and his assistant pilot Chase Kolpath begin to follow clues while a rival follows them, pirates await their return to steal their booty, aliens control information, and a Survey team wants them stopped.

This science fiction adventure is quite exciting in spite of the over kill of opponents that seem to run the gamut of outer space adventures (besides the above there are killing robots and weird aliens), Jack McDevitt spins a fun futuristic thriller. Readers will appreciate how the future looks back and interprets twenty-seventh century America the same way archeologists do to ancient and prehistorical societies. Alex and Chase come across as the good guys against a horde of nasty dudes though the heroes are artifact mercenaries (somewhat like Han Solo) in a fine tale that fans of Mr. McDevitt will appreciate.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted October 15, 2005

Summary

Thousands of years after an entire colony mysteriously disappears, antiquities dealer Alex Benedict comes into possession of a cup that seems to be from the Seeker, one of the colony's ships. Investigating the provenance of the cup, Alex and his assistant Chase follow a deadly trail to the Seeker-strangely adrift in a system barren of habitable worlds. But their discovery raises more questions than it answers, drawing Alex and Chase into the very heart of danger.