(2002)7th read by this author/Another story with Priscilla ?Hutch? Hutchins piloting a ship of amateur archeologists trying to track down the source of radio transmissions of an ancient society. Turns into a rescue mission when one of the party is stranded on an ancient craft.

So-so writing, but an incredibly promising plot that left you completely hanging.

1/1/2012 update. I just finished reading the first book in this series and I really enjoyed it. ( )

Fun concept, but the characters are unbelievably stupid time after time. UFO nuts have spaceship, will travel.

Laura Croft is a cautious, careful, reverent, painstaking archeologist in comparison.

Not to mention the really far fetched forced problems used to push the story. Compare 30 km/r to 1/3C....

Skip this one. ( )

I keep complaining about McDevitt's books but I keep reading them anyway. This one is interesting. I think I like them because they present a near future with space travel that is not an unrealistic utopia but a believable, mildly flawed version of the present with very little change. There have been advance in AI, fusion power and faster than light travel, but there are still problems with human nature, bureaucracy and office politics. The characters are realistic. All of that makes the stories actually a little boring. There is little wiz-bang Flash Gordon or Buck Rodgers action, but the drabness makes it seem more attainable as a future. There are two more "Academy" stories, "Omega" and "Cauldron". I will be reading those also. ( )

Chindi continues the trend of the previous two books in only vaguely being a sequel. It takes place after the previous two with one of the same characters (Hutch) and there are a few references to previous events... But that's about it. That's not a bad thing though.

This book starts with the discovery of an alien satellites around a neutron star. Hijinks ensue and people die (I'll come back to that in a second). It turns out that the satellites are part of a communication network. The next large chunk of the book follows our characters from world to world chasing after this network. (More people die). They finally end up finding a truly massive alien starship and exploring that (more people die). Then there's the climax where--just like Deepsix--our heroes have to attempt a daring / insane rescue mission so as not to leave a man behind.

On the plus side: I love the science aspects of the book. It's really starting to come together as a world and I like how there is some thought put into consequences. FTL travel and communication are possible, but it still takes time. Artificial gravity interacts oddly with inertia. Traveling at relativistic speeds does strange things to time. I keep turning pages, wanting to know more.

On the down side: It's getting increasingly hard to have sympathy for the characters. Over three books, there has been a fairly impressive body count. And almost all of them were avoidable. Over and over in this book, the author hangs a lampshade on the fact that what the characters are doing is dangerous. Off they go, and off someone dies. And yet other than a few token comments, no one seems to care. It's starting to get a bit weird.

Overall (and you can see by my rating), I'm still really enjoying this series. There's a definite sense of something building and the world growing and changing behind the scenes. And better, the epilogue of this book and the title of the next hint that we might just learn a bit more about the Omega Clouds from book 1! Looking forward to it. ( )