Octavia Gone by Jack McDevitt

From Nebula Award–winning author Jack McDevitt comes the eighth installment of the Alex Benedict series featuring Gabe triumphantly reuniting with Alex and Chase to retrieve a possible alien artifact—which may lead them to solve the greatest archaeological mystery of their careers. After being lost in space for eleven years, Gabe has returned, and is trying to find a new life for himself after being presumed dead—just as Alex and Chase are relearning how to live and work with him. But when a seemingly alien artifact goes missing from Gabe’s old collection, a mystery is uncovered concerning its origins and it grants everyone an opportunity to dive into solving it as a team, once again. When a lead on the artifact is tied to a dead pilot’s sole unrecorded trip, another clue leads to one of the greatest mysteries of the age: the infamous disappearance of a team of scientists aboard a space station orbiting a black hole—the Amelia Earhart of their time. With any luck, Alex, Chase, and Gabe may be on the trail of the greatest archaeological discovery of their careers. Nebula Award winner Jack McDevitt, who Stephen King has called “the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke,” has created another terrific science fiction mystery in his beloved Alex Benedict series.

Alex, Chase, Gabe and company undertake efforts to resolve several mysteries which lead to a number of surprises - typical of this series, and very well executed - as I have come to expect from the author. May the Alex Benedict series continue!

3 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary
Artifact handler Alex Benedict's archaeologist uncle Gabe is back from a time warp, and they now share pilot Chase Kolpath's services as they look for clues to the disappearance of a black hole research station.

Review
I'm nothing if not tenacious with regard to authors whose work I like. At the same time, I've been saying for a while (half the series) that the Alex Benedict series is pretty much played out, and this 8th book puts the definitive cap on that. I've no idea whether McDevitt intends more of these books, but I don't plan on reading them.

As has become usual, the book is a slow-paced affair in which Chase and Alex (and now Alex's returned uncle, Gabe) pursue leads that mostly lead nowhere, talk to the media, and Chase has a half-hearted romance with someone. None of it, frankly, is very intriguing. Even one event that should be a blockbuster gets downplayed. The ending is annoying, because they all agree that there's only one way to resolve the final dilemma, and that's very clearly not true. In fact, they choose one of the worst possible options.

The science, unusually for McDevitt, but on target for this series, is no more than some vague handwaving and a number of unlikely settings (with FTL, the galaxy is full of Goldilocks planets, apparently). Archaeology gets even less attention, with uncle Gabe acting more like Schliemann or even Indiana Jones than a serious researcher.

I've suggested before that McDevitt was losing interest in the whole series. I think that's true, but if it isn't, I certainly have. There may be more to extract from the setting and characters, but McDevitt shows no signs of doing so. This is only for the true completionist. Casual readers should stick with the first 3-4 books of the series and go no further.