Firebird by Jack McDevitt

Firebird (Alex Benedict, #6)

by Jack McDevitt

Forty-one years ago, the renowned physicist Dr. Christopher Robin vanished. Before his disappearance, his fringe science theories about the existence of endless alternate universes had earned him both admirers and enemies.

Now his widow has died and Alex Benedict has been asked to handle the auction of the physicist’s artifacts—leading the public to once again speculate on the mystery surrounding Robin’s disappearance. Did he finally find the door between parallel universes that he had long sought?

Intrigued, Benedict and Chase Kolpath embark on their own investigation as they follow the missing man’s trail into the...Read more

Reviewed by Metaphorosis Reviews on

3 of 5 stars

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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 (show spoiler) 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.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 6 July, 2012: Finished reading
  • 6 July, 2012: Reviewed