Seeker (Alex Benedict) Reviews

Seeker is a mix of science fiction & mystery. It focuses on Alex, an antiquities dealer, & his assistant, Chase. Chase is a great character & I sometimes felt that she was getting the short end of the stick -- Alex may be the one with all the ideas but it's Chase who is doing all the work. Anyways. The mystery revolves around a cup that Alex wants to sell. That's it -- the inspiration for this whole story is a single cup. But it's a very old cup & there may be more valuable things where it came from. Alex sends Chase on a mission to discover the history of the cup, involving them both in the politics & reality of a space colony 9000 years in their past (and not that far from our present).

I think that McDevitt did a brilliant job in making this book relevant (sci-fi doesn't have to be that way, but it's always cooler when you can see reality in it somewhere). He took events from today (complete with their political implications), twisted them just a bit, & then had the civilised people of 9000+ years in the future commenting on them. And he does it all without being preachy -- for someone not paying attention to that vibe, it could even be easily looked over in favour of the space operatic essence of the novel.