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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780441016358
ISBN number: 0441016359
Label: Ace Hardcover
Manufacturer: Ace Hardcover
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: November 04, 2008
Publishing house: Ace Hardcover
Sale Popularity Level: 7555
Studio: Ace Hardcover
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Nebula Award winner Jack McDevitt is “the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke” (Stephen King).
Interstellar antiquities dealer Alex Benedict receives a cryptic message asking for help from celebrated writer Vicki Greene—who has been mind-wiped. She has no memory of her past life, or of her plea for assistance. But she has transferred an enormous sum of money to Alex, also without explanation. The answers to this mystery lie on the most remote of human worlds, where Alex will uncover a secret connected to a decades-old political upheaval—a secret that somebody desperately wants hidden, though the price of that silence is unimaginable…
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Rated by buyers -
When most people hire you to do something, they tell you what it is and where it's to be done.
But Alex Benedict gets no such easy jobs in "The Devil's Eye," where he gets a mysterious mission from a woman who no longer exists. Jack McDevitt crafts a thoroughly solid sci-fi adventure that gradually blossoms into an intelligent look at tolerance and politics, although the politicking gradually drowns out the more exciting moments.
After escorting a pair of Mutes around Atlantis, Alex receives a message from famed horror writer Vicki Greene. She announces that "they're all dead."
Unfortunately, Vicki has since had her mind wiped. So Alex and Chase head to the last place she had gone: the backwater planet of Salud Afar. They retrace Vicki's steps across Salud Afar and start uncovering some strange, long ago political events as well as a wealth of urban legends. Unfortunately, it becomes clear that someone wants to stop their investigation.
And when Alex and Chase run afoul of the government conspirators, they find the truth that Vicki was unable to tell anyone -- a ghastly, apocalyptic event that will destroy the entire planet. Even worse, there may be no way to save the planet's population from what will befall them -- unless Chase and Alex can overcome a brewing war between two distrustful species.
Aside from the scientific snafus that are a necessary evil in sci-fi, Jack McDevitt tends to create fascinating realistic views of a future humanity. And in "The Devil's Eye," he manages to successfully cobble together a story about politics, diplomacy, some very alien aliens, and deadly stellar phenomena.
The book starts out as a straightforward mystery, with lots of seemingly disparate clues -- an asteroid, a series of bombings, a government conspiracy. Gradually McDevitt draws them all together as he makes the Big Reveal -- and after a very realistic look at how people might react to such a death sentence, he follows Alex and Chase's desperate quest to find someone to help the innocent people.
No magic "scientific" gizmos here. Instead, McDevitt is more interested in in the politics and diplomacy between humans and Mutes, and in the politicians who care more about their image than about condemning billions to a horrible death. And he fleshes out the storyline nicely, with a bittersweet edge in the story of Vicki Greene, as well as a fascinatingly weird race of telepathic bug-people.
If there's a flaw, it's that the mutual Mute/human distrust and revulsion seems to be overcome a bit too quickly, based on the efforts of just a few people.
Alex and Chase make a good pair of heroes -- he's quirky, charming, clever and has a tendency to focus more on Churchill's "History" than an impending crisis, while she is gutsy and down-to-earth. And McDevitt's Mutes are handled carefully and with a bit of humour, since they are able to read human minds without effort -- some of the things they read are quite funny.
"The Devil's Eye" is a solid sci-fi story with some splatters of action, a lot of political commentary, and a nice space-opera feel. Sci-fi that makes you think.
Rated by buyers 
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McDevitt's book "A Talent for War" is one of my favourites. In the present book, he writes in the universe of that novel, set some years later. The 2 protagonists from Talent are back, Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath. I looked forward to seeing more tales of interstellar conflict between the human Confederacy and the Muties.
Alas, the book falls short. It is certainly in the style of others in this series. A low key detective novel set against an interstellar backdrop. But Devil's Eye lacks much of the tautness of Talent. Even with an imperilled world, things just don't seem to click and the scrabblings of the characters are without the grandeur and drama of a fully fledged conflict between 2 star spanning races.
Plus there is one nagging discrepency [or at least I think so] between Devil's and Talent. The latter described how the humans developed, lost and then rediscovered a hyperdrive immensely faster than what they were using. The Muties lacked it, and Talent ends on this note, where the Muties were outclassed militarily and forced to retreat. But now several years later, there is no such imbalance. Presumably the Muties invented the faster drive once they found that the humans had it. This seems like a huge event. Yet nowhere is this explicitly alluded to? Surely this would have been worth a novel in its own right?
Rated by buyers 
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First of all, I give this four stars, not five, but cannot seem to get that changed.
Another page turner from McDevitt. Alex solves another mystery, but it is Chase who stands as the bright and shining angel of our better nature. She may yet outshine Hutch (star of another excellent series by McDevitt).
Harriet's review concentrated on the failure of a government to tell the truth, but more important is the desire of the Mutes (a telepathic species encountered in the other books in this series, which who humanity has had centuries of conflict) and humans to overcome their fears of each other to achieve peace. How do you do that? Surrender pride and fear, let commonalities rather than differences be held up for all to see.
If humans and Mutes do not come to terms, it is not just war that will kill. A natural disaster would kill billions. With peace and cooperation,their deaths could be prevented. If this sounds too much like fiction, earlier in 2008, a fearful government in Burma (Myanmar) prevented international aid from deploying rapidly, because that government was fearful of the intentions of others. Well, done Jack McDevitt.
Where McDevitt has previously only had limited interaction with the Mutes, Chase and Alex spend more time with them, and we see them fleshed out. It's a difficult task given the telepathic nature of the Mutes. I think McDevitt does very well in his endeavor to convey the differences in culture. Silent (audibly silent) crowds...
There are some things which I think are not well tidied up. It is not clear to me that someone like Vicki Greene would choose mindwipe, even with the horror she uncovered. At one point in the story, it is suggested that it was not her choice, which seemed sensible, yet later it seems that she did choose that course.
Another point concerns the destruction of a warship sent out to check on the loss of the people on the asteroid. Surely other ships were sent out to that region, and they would have seen the truth. (It's hard to miss!) So things should have been exposed 33 years earlier.
I thought the final encounter with Wexler was melodramatic, and could have been left out with no loss.
Rated by buyers -
In the far future, famous horror writer Vicki Greene leaves a message of despair with antiquities dealer Alex Benedict. Soon after dispatching her note, Vicki has her memory expunged.
Alex and his pilot companion Chase Kolpath follow a series of clues that take them 36 light years away to the rimway of the galaxy. Apparently Vicki was conducting research there for her subsequent novel. Something or someone panicked her. Soon after arrival at the edge of nowhere Alex and Chase are harangued by officials who want them to leave or else. The pair begins to unravel a pandemic crisis threatening Salud Afar, but are swept aside by government officials and bureaucrats and it seems too late to safely evacuate the residents.
The latest Alex Benedict futuristic science fiction novel (see SEEKER) is a superb action thriller that focuses on how central governments act and react to internal emergency crisis especially concealing critical information. The story line is fast-paced with a deep cautionary message that those in charge will choose to save face not people. With a nod to the Bush response to Katrina, fans will relish this strong exhilarating thriller in which the spin does not just supersede the need, it is the need as far as those in charge are concerned. This is the genre at its extrapolating best.
Harriet Klausner
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