A Talent for War (Alex Benedict #1) by Jack McDevitt

Christopher Sim changed mankind's history forever when he forged a rag-tag group of misfits into the weapon that broke the alien Ashiyyur. But now, one man believes Sim was a fraud, and Alex must follow the legend into the heart of the alien galaxy to confront a truth far stranger than any fiction.

I came to McDevitt’s books further on in his career, so I wasn’t sure how I would like this one. Not a problem! The story is a mystery, wrapped in a puzzle, wrapped in a enigma.

What had Alex’s uncle found before his untimely death? Whose behind the threats now to Alex’s life? How does this all tie into what really became of Christopher Sim? And how much do the Ashiyyur have to do with any of it?

What surprised me most of all was how much I enjoyed a book written in the first person, because I rarely do care for that point of view. It’s probably the most difficult point of view to write in, yet McDevitt effortlessly pulls it off.

As much as I did enjoy the book, I would have liked for some of the minor, or maybe not so minor, mysteries to be wrapped up. But this is a very minor quibble about a superior novel.

To show the true exquisiteness of the book, I'll paraphrase my favorite passage, taken from an imaginary book that I wish was real:

We are all Hellenes. We owe all that we are to the restless thinkers along the Aegean, who, in the most exquisite sense, took the first steps to the stars. Only the mind is sacred. That notion was a dazzling insight in its time. Wedded to the observation that nature is subject to laws, and that those laws can be understood, it was the key to the universe.

Beautiful, huh?




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