Omega

Rating:
Summary: Totally in the style of his earlier books
Review: A quiet, contemplative read. Readers accustomed to McDevitt's earlier works will enjoy this book. His style tends to resemble that of Asimov's books. The book is hard science fiction, but far removed from the grand space opera of clashing Dreadnought fleets in David Weber's work, or the technopolistic beepings of William Gibson. The action scenes in Omega, while well done, are comparatively low key. It is the idea that dominates, that of robots (or somethings) going from star to star, destroying civilisations that make buildings. In some ways a toned down version of Saberhagen's berserker hypothesis. The Omega clouds do not try to kill all life. And given that Saberhagen has not published anything recently about berserkers, McDevitt's musings are the best that you will find, from a current major author.

The descriptive prose is minimal. Again you can see the resemblance to Asimov's works. The planetary scenes include several in the countryside of an inhabited world. McDevitt's sparse sketchings of this stand in utter contrast to the baroque lushness of Steve Stirling's rural worlds.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not as good as other books in the series
Review: I enjoyed this book, because it's part of the series about the omega clouds, and I've enjoyed the other books, and was looking forward to a good conclusion.

However, I felt this book wasn't quite as strong as the other "Hutch" books that McDevitt has written (Engines of God, Deepsix, Chindi, ...). The problem, as some other reviewers have pointed out, is that there are far too many minor characters to keep track of. You never really get to know any of them, and it really becomes confusing trying to remember who is who, and why you even care what happens to each particular character.

It's hard to really figure out who is the main character in this book. It certainly isn't Hutch, as she spends all of her time in an administrative role back home.

The other main problem is that I felt the book kind of bogged down and got a bit slow towards the middle. The main characters were spending most of their time observing an alien civilization, and there really wasn't much action. They observed minute details about the aliens, such as who was going to marketplaces, who was going to lectures, etc, and it just really wasn't that interesting. When the action finally picks up near the end, everything is very predictable. It's not as good as Deepsix or Chindi where you were really drawn into the struggle of the characters.

The final attempt at an explanation of what the omega clouds purpose is was a little weak. I won't spoil things by giving away any details, but I sure wouldn't mind if McDevitt forgot this ending and wrote another book that offered a better attempt at a final explanation.

McDevitt also kills off minor characters far too easily. I swear in each of his books, theres been some bonehead character who takes a laser cutter to some alien artifact with obvious results. I mean, these people are scientists, explorers, archaeologists, etc -- they should have more sense than they do.

All that being said, I would still recommend this book, especially if you've read the others in the series. The writing is good, and entertaining.

Rating:
Summary: ok but nothing exciting
Review: Jack McDevitt is one of my favorite writers and that's why I was so dissapointed after I read this book. While it wasn't bad by any means it was nowhere near as good as Chindi or Deepsix or Infinity Beach. I think the problem that I had is that most of the book is taken by description by this alien civilization and how they live and act. Its rather boring and personally, I couldn't wait for something exciting to happen. I only hope his next book will be more satisfying.