Teaser

A renowned author’s plea for help draws Alex Benedict and his assistant Chase Kolpath into a world beyond antiquities. But with their new employer unable to remember why she asked for help, Benedict and Kolpath find themselves stuck in an every expanding mystery . . .

Review

Let me be clear. There are few things I find more tedious than writers writing about writers. The moment a fictional character is an author, I feel my interest start waning. Either it ends up being a self insert (looking at you, Stephen King), it gets bogged down in details, or it dances the thin line between self-aggrandisement and parody. At best, it offers insights into the publishing world that I could just as easily glean from non-fiction. This might sound like a harsh perspective, and for sure there are exceptions to the general rule, but my prior experience with fictional writers has been a decidedly rough one.

One much happier track record, however, has been my experience with Jack McDevitt. Despite a bumpy start with Chindi, I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read of his since, and the Alex Benedict series is some of the finest science fiction out there. If he wanted to write about an author, I was willing to trust him.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. Vicki Greene spends precious little time on the page. Instead, she is an absence into which the first half of the book is poured. Extracts from her work also form the epigraphs for The Devil’s Eye‘s chapters, allowing McDevitt to flirt with a different style of writing. The first half of the book centres on what Greene might have encountered on a research trip, and why it led to her having her memory wiped. This means a long tour of a planet’s supposedly haunted or otherwise spooky locations. A typically sedate start to a McDevitt novel, but the horror undertones make for a nice change of pace.

That horror aspect also plays to one of McDevitt’s greatest strengths. Not so much worldbuilding, as history building. Every spooky story or haunted graveyard fleshes out the long history of the world a little bit more. There is an entire history of tyranny and rebellion that makes little direct impact on the plot, yet which informs every political manoeuvre and decision as events continue to develop.

What is most remarkable about The Devil’s Eye is that it wraps up very quickly. The Alex Benedict series often has unusual pacing, skipping from one plotline to another, with plenty of different stories in any one book. However, The Devil’s Eye doesn’t introduce new elements the way the others do. By the halfway point, we know everything. This allows McDevitt to tackle something that is often left to the imagination. The aftermath.

Without spoiling anything, the midpoint of the book features a reveal of planetary importance. The rest of the book shows us how society reacts to this development. It stops being a desperate search for answers, and while there is a race against time, it’s a race that has plenty of time to run. What takes over is a broader look at how societies, and humans in general, react to a crisis. Do we band together to overcome it? Or will internal divisions and paranoia scupper our efforts before they have really begun?

While remaining as standalone as other books in the series, The Devil‘s Eye also reaches back to the events of A Talent for War, bring the mistrust between humanity and the Mutes back into the foreground. It’s one more thread that McDevitt weaves into the complex tapestry. Yet while the artistry on display is clear for all to see, the book itself remains utterly accessible.

If I haven’t convinced you to read Jack McDevitt by now, I simply don’t know what it will take to get you onboard. Surely, he must be one of the genre’s greats, and The Devil’s Eye is a prime example of everything he excels at.

Book Stats

• Alex Benedict Series #4
• Published in 2008
• 374 Pages