Coming Home (An Alex Benedict Novel)

This is the seventh book in Jack McDevitt's series about antiquities dealer Alex Benedict and his pilot/assistant Chase Kolpath. Once again they are on the trail of a rumored cache of lost artifacts. This time the valuables are from the ancient NASA space museum and the locations they visit in search of clues include Earth itself. There they encounter interesting natives, exotic animals, and various half-truths about mankind's early history. It is both like and unlike coming home.

The book's second homecoming involves Gabriel Benedict, Alex's long-lost uncle. Along with 2,600 other passengers and crew, Gabe has been trapped on board the passenger ship Capella. An interaction between the Capella's engines and a "damaged" region of space has made it impossible for the ship to surface from transdimensional space for more than a few hours at a time. In between appearances, time on the Capella runs much more slowly than in normal space. Although Gabe and the other passengers have experienced only a few days, eleven years has passed for everyone else--and during most of it everyone thought the Capella had been lost permanently. The pending reemergence of the Capella creates some interesting adjustment problems for the passengers and their families.

This is a rewarding and enjoyable read for fans of the Alex Benedict series. Those not yet familiar with the series will miss some of the connections and enjoy the story a little less. (They should start with the first book, A Talent For War.) The mystery of the missing artifacts unfolds gradually, with clues both helpful and irrelevant. The tension surrounding Gabe Benedict's possible return is the right mix of happy anticipation and challenges to address. And there are a few new nuggets from Alex and Chase's past and present personal lives. It's a good mix.

This book gave me great happiness. I loved being with my friends again. The author continues to add characters in tiny amounts. He leaves himself lots of space to continue in any direction. I love this set of circumstances and will always ask for more. Got to find out if McDevitt plans any more. I highly respect his storytelling style and his groups of characters.
If no other author comes up with something enjoyable, I'm on the verge of starting this series over. Thank you Jack McDevitt. Gma

I read the first six Alex Benedict novels earlier this year and had to wait for this one, Coming Home. I was thrilled when it showed up on my Kindle and it was well worth the wait. As usual, the first page drew me in and kept my interest until the end. The ending was most appropriate. No disappointment other than I have to wait for the next novel. Hope there will be another one in the near future.

Well done! Once again McDevitt brings home a great story. Not only does he always get the science right, but - as ever - his characters are fully three-dimensional and credible. A good read, one that I'll enjoy reading again.

Book number seven of seven in a space opera mystery series. I read the well formatted and bound MMPB. I will purchase and read more in this series should there be any (I am concerned that this might be the last book).

The setting of the book is around 11,250 CE (I prefer AD but that is personal). Alex and Chase are presented with an artifact of an early FTL communications device that precedes the dark ages of the fourth millennium. The fourth millennium was so overwhelming that few books and artifacts survived it, the internet of the time was purposefully destroyed.

Note that even though the book is set in the twelfth millennium, there are still technological challenges. FTL (faster than light) space travel is common yet somewhat dangerous. And people are still people, good, bad, and crazy.

The Alex Benedict universe is full and extremely detailed. The Confederacy of sentients is over 300 planets with thousands of more settled planets and moons. The Confederacy is a utopia where no one wants for food, shelter, and education. Professional politicians are not allowed. Yet people continue to work to advance the population.

Note that the author has chosen to represent the global warming as fulfilled on Earth with all the coastal cities under water. As a result of the reduced land area, Earth is no longer the planet with the largest human population.

Having read his other books, I was full of anticipation starting this one but quickly disappointed. Talk, talk, talk, predictable, shallow. Some of the characters promised interesting conflict but in the end were not only shallow but flat, as if the author just lost interest in developing them.

There are two unrelated story lines that each could have been made into a gripping novella or short story. It makes no sense to me that they were combined into one novel. And worse, each story line seemed to be filled with so much unnecessary writing it seems like much was filler to make a fatter book. I almost quit reading several times but ended up skimming each page, allowing myself about six seconds before going to the next.

This copy had an "exciting excerpt" from the book Thunderbird which seemed interesting. I almost bought it until I read the reviews on the store which indicated the writing was much the same as Coming Home. Too bad.

This is an excellent space adventure set in McDevitt's "Alex Benedict" universe.

The time is around 11,000 AD. Benedict is something of a detective, and nearly simultaneously two mysteries come to his attention. The first is an engineering oddity with some of the first generation star drives, that caused those ships to "skip" through time without their passengers noticing. A research team has come up with a way to predict where these ships will "emerge" and how to stop them--if they can get enough ships together to try.

Nearly parallel to all of this is the hunt for some artifacts from thousands of years ago, during the Time of the Collapse (circa 2100 or so). There's a rumor that a cache of such artifacts was hidden to avoid destruction, and it appears to be nothing more than that until the death of an old friend reveals a pristine several thousand year old communicator and a clue as to where this cache might be found. The hunt is on....

This very much reads as if the author had these two ideas, fleshed them out separately, then went back in with some filler to "blend" them together into one seamless book. I don't particulraly begrudge him that thought at times I don't feel the blending is well done....it's like "well we're doing this in THIS chapter, and now we're doing THAT". But for the most part it works and that's what's important.

Well recommended for fans of fine, thinking science fiction.

Full disclosure, science fiction is my favorite genre and McDevitt is my favorite author. Having said that I must say that there are times when I've found his novels to be less than satisfying. I enjoy his novels most when he's exploring his love of archaeology and puts it into the far future. Another area that he writes about, which I enjoy most, is when he's exploring "are we alone?".

Anyway, McDevitt's back, in my opinion, with Coming Home. Imagine hundreds trapped in some kind of a timewarp where you'd see them only once every so many years. Worst, time is traveling for them at a different pace than it is for those outside the timewarp. How do those outside deal with it? How do those trapped deal with knowing that things have changed dramatically since they left on their journey?

I found the writing and the plot compelling. BTW, McDevitt does a good job of having two plot lines that are connected.

I recommend this book. I've read some of the negative reviews... I guess that's why it's important to read several reviews before making a decision.

From his first novel, _The Hercules Text_, right through this one, Jack McDevitt's fiction has been all about uncovering ancient secrets. Sort of what Dan Brown might have done if he wrote science fiction, and was actually a decent writer.

Be that as it may: this is the seventh novel about Alex Benedict, dealer in antiquities on the planet Rimway, ten thousand years or so from now.

There are two intertwined plots. The first concerns the starship _Capella_, which disappeared some years ago with Alex's uncle Gabe on it. It is caught in a spacetime warp and surfaces for a few hours every five years. It's about to surface again, and people are determined to save those aboard.

The second concerns the greatest antiquities of all: those from Earth before the Dark Ages that almost ended starflight. In particular, Alex finds himself on a quest for the "Apollo cache," a collection of priceless artifacts from the Florida space museum that was moved several times after the rising ocean took most of Florida. The last move was at the opening of the Dark Ages, and nobody knows where the cache went.

But a recently-deceased archaeologist turns out to have had an item from the dawn of the Space Age hidden in his closet, and that puts Alex on the hunt...

The pacing is sure and steady and the mysteries build, with someone determined to throw Alex off the track, until at last the tragic truth is uncovered in the first denouement (of several).

This book is too good not to have been nominated for awards; yet it seems it wasn't, probably because it was a series book, and, of course, because Puppies. Ah, well.

Indeed as others opined, this is a rather dull book. To me, the single act of danger on Chase Kolpath and Alex Benedict was perfunctory and can be read as an almost obligatory plot complication done with the minimum of tension and effort on the part of the author.

Now the book does tie up 2 loose ends. It connects with the opening book, A Talent For War, written some 20 years ago, and which I consider to be McDevitt's best novel. The latter has some real intrigue and complexity. As well as several dramatic scenes that were quite well depicted. If any of you have never read that book, you should. A far better effort than this current one. Sadly, it is as though McDevitt spent much of his creativity on Talent and has since coasted down. None of his subsequent novels, including this one, has come close.

Talent starts with Benedict describing the loss of his uncle Gabe on a ship that has just disappeared. Now we see the people on that ship rescued, but with little drama.

The other loose end is that apparently for the first time, we see that the universes of the Priscilla Hutchins books and the Benedict/Kolpath ones are the same. There is a fleeting reference to records retrieved from millenia ago that mention Hutchins en passant. The Hutchins books were set a few centuries forward from the Common Era. While the others were some 10 000 years later.

Yeah, I found this book shallow and perfunctory, which was such a shame. There just wasn't any of the mystery, depth of detail, escalating tension or sense of the extraordinary that's found in the best of McDevitt's books.

There were two potentially good stories here - the rescue of the travellers trapped in the Capella and the search for artefacts from the early era of space exploration - but neither is done justice. There's no action, no villain, no real feeling to any of it; the attempts at socio-political and historical commentary are trite; the in-jokes are self-indulgent; and deus ex machina solutions off-screen are close to unforgivable. So much grounding detail about setting, geography and character was missing that I don't see how a reader unfamiliar with the series could really grasp what's going on. I did read Coming Home in a single sitting, which says something for it, but I was bored and annoyed for a lot of the time.

I keep reading the Alex Benedict books, but I've been disappointed a few times now. Maybe it's time to stop.

Indeed as others opined, this is a rather dull book. To me, the single act of danger on Chase Kolpath and Alex Benedict was perfunctory and can be read as an almost obligatory plot complication done with the minimum of tension and effort on the part of the author.

Now the book does tie up 2 loose ends. It connects with the opening book, A Talent For War, written some 20 years ago, and which I consider to be McDevitt's best novel. The latter has some real intrigue and complexity. As well as several dramatic scenes that were quite well depicted. If any of you have never read that book, you should. A far better effort than this current one. Sadly, it is as though McDevitt spent much of his creativity on Talent and has since coasted down. None of his subsequent novels, including this one, has come close.

Talent starts with Benedict describing the loss of his uncle Gabe on a ship that has just disappeared. Now we see the people on that ship rescued, but with little drama.

The other loose end is that apparently for the first time, we see that the universes of the Priscilla Hutchins books and the Benedict/Kolpath ones are the same. There is a fleeting reference to records retrieved from millenia ago that mention Hutchins en passant. The Hutchins books were set a few centuries forward from the Common Era. While the others were some 10 000 years later.

Yeah, I found this book shallow and perfunctory, which was such a shame. There just wasn't any of the mystery, depth of detail, escalating tension or sense of the extraordinary that's found in the best of McDevitt's books.

There were two potentially good stories here - the rescue of the travellers trapped in the Capella and the search for artefacts from the early era of space exploration - but neither is done justice. There's no action, no villain, no real feeling to any of it; the attempts at socio-political and historical commentary are trite; the in-jokes are self-indulgent; and deus ex machina solutions off-screen are close to unforgivable. So much grounding detail about setting, geography and character was missing that I don't see how a reader unfamiliar with the series could really grasp what's going on. I did read Coming Home in a single sitting, which says something for it, but I was bored and annoyed for a lot of the time.

I keep reading the Alex Benedict books, but I've been disappointed a few times now. Maybe it's time to stop.

Jack McDevitt is an excellent writer, an outstanding story teller, but this isn't one of his best books. I awaited this book with anticipation. However, I was to disappointed - this was not the Alex Benedict series I had come to expect. It was, frankly, dull.

The writing is of course excellent but the treatment of the entire plot felt perfunctory - the seemingly random attempt on their lives (which happens in almost every book) was so random and unconnected to the plot it seemed to have just been put in to attempt to liven it up a bit. However, even the attempt on their lives was handled in an uninteresting and lifeless manner. Chase's romance was similarly uninteresting and handled in a really superficial manner. The preparations for the rescue mission to the Capella were about the most interesting part of the book but the actual operation itself was, again, dull, without 'drama' or 'tension'. The search for the great trove of Golden Age artifacts was plodding and lifeless, the usual number of dead ends and cold trails only to arrive at the final downbeat discovery of the hiding place of artifacts. Even the homecoming of the once thought to be dead Gabe Benedict was, again, handled with so little 'drama' that he may as well have been down the shops instead of missing, trapped in a time warp for 11 years.

So, for me, this was by far the least engaging, least interesting and least original of all of the Alex Benedict books. I do hope there will be more Alex Benedict books as it would be a shame to have the series finish on this note.

Does anyone really believe that this story (and these novels) take place 11,000 years in the future. The characters act and speak like white, middle-class Americans with a college education. The names of the characters are all out of contemporary America. McDevitt is a good writer, sure, and he's won all the major awards. But compare these books to any novel or series by Jack Vance. When you read a Jack Vance novel, you really get the sense that they take place in a totally transmogrified human culture thousands of years hence. I just kept seeing this book taking place a couple of hundred years in the future when there might be some semblance of white American culture alive. But, no, these books talk about Dark Ages (when space-faring was somehow lost then found again). McDevitt does not really try to create new and unique characters. His future where these novels take place is America today and Chase and Alex are just two (totally sexless, by the way) American detectives or fortune hunters. Lazy writing, lazy imagination . . . and it will win all the awards because readers nowadays don't demand much from their writers. As long as it's got a great cover and is in a series, American readers everywhere will buy these books and keep reading them. Go read Jack Vance instead. He's the high-watermark of science fiction of the far future. These books are utterly without imagination.

This was good, but certainly not the best. There is interesting interplay between the characters and a couple good plotlines to keep things moving. McDevitt usually puts forth a good mystery, in this one he telegraphs all the twists like a weeknight TV serial.

So there wasn't much of a mystery but it still was a good story. Now for a rant...

<spoiler>One of my biggest peeves in SciFi is shockwaves in space. If you cut your way through an airlock then there shouldn't be any air left... so how do you get an explosion? Especially an explosion with a fire afterwards!!!</spoiler>
/end rant

Coming Home
Jack McDevitt
Ace, Nov 4 2014, $25.95
ISBN: 9780425260876

In 11,256 C.E., most people are thrilled when a nine millennium old beginning of the space age relic is found; as much of them went missing when places like the Florida Peninsular fell beneath the sea. When charismatic dawn of the space age archeologist (sans degree) Garnett Baylee recently died, he left behind an incomplete enigma in his home tied to the twentieth century mythological Apollo baby steps.

Pilot Chase Kolpath flies antiquities dealer Alex Benedict to Earth to investigate Baylee’s last find, but make no progress on locating the rest of Apollo. Unable to be in two places at the same time, Alex places their search on temporary hold though the antiquarian fears the delay will prove costly and realizes his beloved father-figure Uncle Gabe Benedict will lecture him for risking an opportunity. Instead the pair leaves to meet the interstellar vessel Capella, which disappeared eleven years ago with over two thousand passengers and crew on board including Alex’s Uncle Gabe. Aware of three other lost ships recovered near Sanusar, but also knowing they have a short time before the Capella vanishes again; the Sanusar Recovery Force, Alex and Chase attempt to save those on-board.

The seventh Benedict-Kolpath science fiction mystery is a fabulous far futuristic thriller though the adventures seem somewhat muted compared with the lead duo’s previous escapades (see Firebird and The Devil's Eye). The two subplots engage readers in different ways. The Floridian space age artifacts and whole state being under the ocean serve as a climate warning through an historiographical archeological looking back over nine millennia (mindful of the movie The Virgin President - Fillard Millmore); while the Capella return is a thrilling space time-warp rescue mission.

Harriet Klausner

Coming Home (2014) is the seventh SF novel in the Alex/Chase series, following Firebird. The initial volume in this sequence is A Talent For War.

In the previous volume, Karen showed up on time for her appointment despite the snow. She asked to see Alex, but he was not available. She had inherited some items from her sister that had belonged to Christopher.

Karen assumed that Chase knew her relationship to Christopher, but Chase didn't even know who he was. Naturally, Alex knew about him. He even knew that Chris Robin wrote "Starlight and You". He decided to take Karen as a client.

Chase and Jacob researched Robin and discovered that a pilot who worked for Robin dropped him off at his house. Robin was never seen again. The pilot became a major hero later that night by rescuing victims of the Great Kolandra Earthquake and then vanished himself.

Robin was best known among physicists for work on alternate universes and black holes. Some of the public were more interested in his work on ghosts. There is even a Christopher Robin Society meeting monthly to discuss outre topics investigated by the man.

In this novel, Alex Benedict is an antiquarian, buying and selling pieces of history through his business Rainbow Enterprises on Rimway. Since he lives nine thousand years or more in the future, there is a plenitude of famous goods from past polities and personalities. He has an uncle who disappeared on the Capella.

Chase Kolpath is a starship pilot and executive assistant for Rainbow Enterprises. She has been an integral part of the business for several years, but has always taken a backseat to Alex regarding awards and public recognition.

Jacob is the AI for Rainbow Enterprises. He is also an integral part of the business.

Marissa Earl is psychiatrist and the granddaughter of Garnett Baylee, a well known archaeologist. He had died a few years earlier.

Shara Michaels is an acquaintance of Chase. She has some contacts with the Sanusar Recovery Force.

JoAnn Suttner is an employee of the SRF. She is a topflight physicist.

In this story, Marissa calls in to ask Alex about a mysterious device found in a closet in her house. Alex says that it is a Corbett communicator. It dates from the twenty-sixth century.

The Corbett was the first hyperspace transmitter. Only one is known to exist. It should be worth a bundle.

Moreover, the Corbett serial number indicated that it was part of the collection from the Florida Space Museum. The items in the museum had been missing for eight millennia. The other items from the museum were still missing.

Garnett had been obsessed by the Golden Age, especially of spaceflight. The Corbett would have been his piece de resitance, marking his place in history. Moreover, it may have led to the other items from the museum.

Meanwhile, Alex and Chase are famous for the rescue of two children from the Intrepide. This led to the formation of the SRF. One day, Chase invited to lunch by Shara.

Chase is introduced to JoAnn. Then she is informed that the SRF have located the Capella. The SRF are conducting tests of the Armstrong drives in yachts. They hope to get use of the Grainger -- a twin of the Capella -- for more testing.

Orian transport allows the SRF to restore the original Armstrong engine on the Grainger. JoAnn and her pilot decide to stay on the Grainger during the tests. Everything goes as planned, but JoAnn and the pilot are dead. JoAnn leaves notes on the warp and engine.

This tale addresses the notes to Robert Dyke. He is on the Capella. Apparently JoAnn was expecting the recovery of the Capella passengers and crew.

The politicians decide to delay the rescue of the Capella. The next installment in this sequence has not yet been announced on the store.

Highly recommended for McDevitt fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of space/time manipulation, political intrigue, and space rescues. Read and enjoy!

-Arthur W. Jordin

But there are a few problems with the book series. The author forgets some facts sated in previous books and in this book in particular he forgets that Gabe's AI was lost. The author also forgot a few books back Fenn had a family. Otherwise it's a great Syria really enjoyed it

Jack McDevitt’s new book Coming Home, the latest book in the Alex Benedict series, and serves as a great example of what McDevitt has to offer. Set thousands of years in the future, Coming Home features antiquarian Alex Benedict and his assistant/friend Chase Kolpath as they unravel the mystery surrounding a piece of ancient space technology while also grappling with a race against the clock to save thousands of passengers who are trapped in hyperspace–and one of those passengers is Alex’s uncle Gabe Benedict.

A master storyteller, Jack McDevitt delivers another compelling tale of mystery, intrigue, and antiques hunting with Coming Home. After the death of a colleague (Garnett Baylee), a rare artifact from a lost treasure trove of ancient space travel equipment is brought to Alex Benedict’s attention. Alex, being Alex, can’t turn away from the potential of solving an ancient mystery and discovering something from the earliest days of interstellar travel. However, as Alex and Chase get closer to unraveling Garnett Baylee’s secret, they discover that the truth could cost more than their lives. Meanwhile, Chase is being pulled away to help with the recovery and rescue of the passengers stranded on the Capella, the interstellar spaceship that is fluctuating between warp space and regular space. However, success is not so easily found and the rescue mission is left with no easy answers.

While fans of the Alex Benedict series are sure to enjoy Coming Home, new readers might feel like they stepped into the book in media res since one of the story lines is a continuation of the previous novel. However, McDevitt does a nice job of leaving just enough breadcrumbs from the last novel to keep new readers from feeling lost. By incorporating two very different story lines, there is competition for Alex’s and Chase’s attention as they struggle with their guilt, desires, curiosity, and duty to each other and those who have placed their trust in them. On the surface, Coming Home may appear as just another Alex Benedict novel, but in truth it is a jumping off point that leads into the great unknown…which is a wonderful thing for any reader or author who has been with a series for a long time.

In many ways, Coming Home feels like an ending to a long journey. There is a sense of resolution and finality in the novel, giving the distinct impression that things are never going to be the same for Alex and Chase. Coming Home is a great addition to the Alex Benedict series, and it definitely gives McDevitt’s fans something fun to ring in the New Year reading.

Coming Home is a terrific read, packed with all of the best that Jack McDevitt has to offer with a few extra surprises to boot!

Despite the repetitive use of similar plot elements in his novels I am a regular and enthusiastic reader of McDevitt. Coming Home, however, is a low point for him; tedious and repetitive in the extreme. Regular readers may remember an almost exact storyline from one of his earliest books. I don't want to give anything away, in case some may have read neither book, but the state of, the fate of and the manner in which the artifacts end up, in both novels, is the same. Everything in this book will feel recycled.

Jack McDevitt has been writing of Alex Benedict and his assistant Chase Kolpath for a while. They live nine thousand years from now in a confederation at peace and hunt for sellable artifacts from the past. In the latest they are given a communicator that would have been with artifacts from the early space age and lost during the dark ages of the early three thousands. The quest finds them Coming Home (Hard from Ace) to an Earth pleasantly warmed with many of today’s cities under water. Plenty of tourists, but someone doesn’t want them digging and they face an attack on their sailboat while diving at the Huntington Space Museum. At the same time the interstellar transport Capella, lost in a space warp is due to emerge after eleven years (several days to the passengers). Alex’s mentor Gabe was a passenger. Fun, as usual.Review printed in the Philadelphia Weekly Press

The latest of Jack McDevitt's enjoyable Alex Benedict novels may not be the best of the series, but it's still better than most of the science fiction mysteries out there. McDevitt's characterization and plots compare very well to Isaac Asimov 's first Elijah Baley-Daneel Olivaw stories.

What concerns me is that "Coming Home" has all the signs of being the end of the adventures of Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath. I'm not going to spoil the read, which I highly recommend, and I sincerely hope I am wrong, but I can't escape the feeling.

If you're a McDevitt fan, "Coming Home" is a must-read. If you're new to Alex and Chase and a fan of good science fiction or solid mysteries, I think you'll enjoy "Coming Home" as well as the other six novels in the series.

I was disappointed in this latest installment. The opposing forces were mundane, the search for the artifacts was somewhat tense, but was cheapened by the end result (the actual successful sleuth work having been done decades before). Finally, I felt the author's use of his characters to blatantly push his personal opinions (I assume) regarding global warming to be jarring. It broke the spell (what there was of it) of the story. That felt kind of amateurish.