Firebird

Firebird is the sixth entry in Jack McDevitt's Alex Benedict series, in which Alex and his partner Chase Kolpath go in search of famous scientist Christopher Robbin, who mysteriously disappeared seemingly in front of his house, never to be seen again. Their journey takes them to some unexpected, and surprising locales, which will forever alter the universe in the main characters live.

Jack McDevitt continues his excellent narratives, with his usual pace and clarity. Never too wordy, or repetitive, McDevitt continues to provide a fascinating, entertaining read. The characters are familiar, since readers of any of the previous Benedict novels will be familiar with them; McDevitt does delve a bit further into the relationship Chase had with Alex's uncle Gabe, which reveals some interesting emotions at play there. In some ways, Chase's attitude toward Alex reflects that the author may be growing weary of these characters, and future novels in this series may not be forthcoming. The dialogue is, as always, spot on; never do we hear something that sounds outright ridiculous, or unbelievable–McDevitt seems cautious to make his work easy for anybody to read, science fiction fan or not.

Though Firebird is a good read, and ends on a particularly high note, the twists and turns leave the reader wanting a bit. In many ways, this book has three different stories, all going on at pretty much the same time. While not hard to follow, the first part of the story gets set aside, and never truly resolved, which is unfortunate, since it's quite interesting. Instead, Alex spends roughly a paragraph explaining what he feels probably happened, and the author then moves on, never returning to detail for certain what occurred. From there, it's the two main sequences that go back and forth, sometimes interrupting each other to be told. Because of this, the book almost feels as if it were two different novels, thrown together into a single volume.

For all the flaws, it's still better than McDevitt's last Benedict novel, Echo. The plot is more intriguing, and ultimately has a better payoff. In many ways, Firebird feels like a finale to the Alex Benedict series. If so, it's an acceptable one. Still, it would be hard to let the characters go.

After the disappointing [b:Echo 8400986 Echo (Alex Benedict, #5) Jack McDevitt http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1348990987s/8400986.jpg 13260795], I'm happy to say that McDevitt is back on track with Firebird. It's not the best of the series, but it's a lot better than Echo. This book was enjoyably put together, and the mystery, while not quite as deep as anticipated, was still fulfilling. McDevitt, as usual, keeps the world reasonably fully-fleshed as he goes along, including at least a superficial look at some of the social issues that such a world would face.At the same time, I fear the series is running out of steam. McDevitt uses essentially the same set up every time, including Chase's concern for Alex, public criticism of Alex, Alex going on talk shows, etc. It was good the first time, but by now we've seen this same sequence too many times for it to engage us. The story is still well worth reading, but it's an unusual case of a series book being less interesting for the cognoscenti than for newcomers.For reasons that are unclear, McDevitt throws in the occasional sexist line and attitude. He's careful not to attribute them to core characters, but they're not important for the story, and I wasn't sure why they were there at all. They seem anachronistic. Similarly, for no visible reason, a key character is called Christopher Robin. There is no connection with [b:Winnie-the-Pooh 99107 Winnie-the-Pooh A.A. Milne http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298440130s/99107.jpg 1225592] that I could come up with.There's also a deus ex machina element in which Alex comes up with missing secondary information (what really happened on the night Christopher was said to disappear) from no clear source. One gets the impression McDevitt just couldn't be bother to come up with a reasonable source.I enjoyed this, and will pick up the next one, but I do think it might be wise for the next book to be the last in the series. McDevitt has set up a way for that to happen, and I hope it does.