Starhawk (A Priscilla Hutchins Novel)

Jack McDevitt has created a wonderful universe and I always but these books sight unseen. This prequel if prequels takes us back to Hutchins' beginnings as a pilot and introduces us after the fact, to his relatively quiet universe. I am consistently amazed by how much I enjoy his writing without the universe is ending plots.

In Starhawk McDevitt takes us back to the early career of Priscilla Hutchins and it seems to have been something of a misstep. While this universe is often compelling and asks big questions, Starhawk is very focused on small details and never really achieves a grand sense of wonder like the other books in this series. It's a quick read and decent book, but meanders a lot and the reader is often left wondering why so many scenes with the two protagonists stretch on. In short, not bad. But McDevitt has certainly done much better.

I really enjoy McDevitt's mysteries, but found the first person switching among characters this time to be distracting. I had been looking forward to a yarn about Priscilla alone. Understandably the other characters are essential, but their stories might have been better related in the third person. This may be a personal quirk but I felt it dragged the storyline down enough for me to grant only four stars. It's still a good read, however.

The usual Jack. Great story telling, excellent plot development and terrific first contact scenario. I don't know why he thinks hutch stories are not worth writing but the in my opinion are far better read than that stupid ancient object dealer.

Jack McDevitt hits another one out of the ballpark. One of the best days of the year is the day a new McDevitt book arrives and he is at his best writing about Hutch. This is a Hutch prequel to the other novels and works very well. McDevitt presents a future that seems logical and characters you want to know.

This would be considered a prequel to the Priscilla Hutchins and Alex Benedict novels. I have read all of the books that I have found in the series. Interesting that the writer is male, while the principal character is female. A good read.

a snails race to nowhere. when I realized it was a prequel, I was into joining Priscilla on her first big adventure, not getting trapped
in a boring stretched out story that never ends. My 99 cent an episode Ryk Brown "Frontier Saga" space opera is a much better deal
and more exciting. Thank you but no thanks Mr. McDevitt.

I really enjoy Jack's writing. His development of his characters leaves you feeling like they are your friends, part of a crowd you'd want to be a part of. Starhawk tells the story of P. hutchen's start as a super luminal pilot and explains why she is so successful in her career. We'll done, Jack M.

Basically, I fully agree with the two star review by Jacob Whitehead. However I would like to add that after reading science-fiction for some decades this book is certainly not worth reading. The writing is stilted and goes nowhere in the end. Save your money.

Jack McDevitt never disappoints. We have met Priscilla much later in her career in other novels. This one starts earlier, just as she is getting her pilot certification. McDevitt's style is beautiful and easy to read. I loved every minute of this book.

Is this the same Jack McDevitt who wrote the Alex Benedict stories? The whole book felt like something a teenager was forced to write for school. In a week. While the other kids had fun. Please bring back the other Jack. The one that wrote fun, grownup stuff.

Starhawk is set in a not-too-distant future Earth where faster-than-light (FTL) space travel has just begun, changing the way earth finds solutions the ever increasing global resource deficit. It is in this era that our heroine Priscilla 'Hutch' Hutchins starts her piloting career. Determined to make a life in space for herself, Hutch takes on any jobs she can find, only to end up working for a terraforming corporation that has very questionable ethics on sustaining life on viable planets.

During a series of incidents involving threats and sabotage, Hutch has to find a way to fulfil her contract and keep everyone safe from the political upheaval that they find themselves in.

I've read the whole series and I do find this prequel lacks what the others in the series excel at. The adventure, daring rescues and heroics all make for an excellent series but I think if you were to start reading, Starhawk would be a let down, so head over to Jack McDevitt's 'The Engines of God' book and start there.

The Academy Series is a great space adventure that follows the career and adventures of a young female pilot who often ends up in the wrong place (or right place depending on perspective) at the wrong (or right) time. She is as courageous as she is professional and her adventures all draw on previous experiences to get her through. She is quick to learn, slow to anger and always determined to help save lives where ever she goes.

The world of the series is so well constructed and believable and the characters all feel very real. I really enjoyed reading each of Hutch's adventures, following her life's career from pilot to company manager and eventually to explorer of the most intriguing question man kind will ever face – what is the Omega Cloud? You will have to read the whole series to find out.

I gave 4 stars to Starhawk, but 5 to the whole series as I really enjoyed reading them all.

Not a very impressive book, overall. I was pulled by the phrase by Steven King displayed on the cover of the book saying that McDevitt was “the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clark.” I should learn not to trust this sort of things when I pick up a book.

Starhawk was the first book by McDevitt I’ve ever read and I guess Steven King’s phrase elicited big expectations for this Sci-Fi story, expectations that for the entire length of the book have never been meet.

Really, what’s wrong with the book, in my opinion, is that it lacks of an identity. Pages after pages I struggled to find a story and characters, but until the last word I never really find either. One could argue that usually dialogues are the bedrock of any character’s personalities, the way they can be recognized, loved, feared or hated. However, in this book dialogues seem only a way to fill up pages after pages and maybe to met the publisher’s demand to create a book of a certain length.

One could also argue that Sci-Fi book are defined by the world-building behind them. In McDevitt’s book I saw basically a nowadays world, with nowadays concerns, amenities, talk show, baseball games, cocktails, presidential races, set two hundreds years from now (in 2195).'

A huge disappointment. This book has nothing to do with Clark’s or Asimov’s works.

Setting is unrealistic (even for sci-fi), and contradicts both itself and current/recent historical trends. Huge holes and gaps all of which were emphasized and played major roles in the main storyline.

Characters are flat, two dimensional, boring, and show little-to-no growth. I felt little or nothing for any of them, so I wasn't invested in their futures or fates.

Plot........long, bland and poorly constructed.

Title isn't even alluded to until two thirds of the way through the book, and only really makes sense in the last few pages.

Quality of the writing actually made me wonder how this was even published. Had this been the first in the series I doubt it would have, with a second book being as unlikely as most of the setting and plot.

Overall, if this was the first book I read by Jack McDevitt I would probably never pick up another one. As this IS the first Priscilla Hutchins novel I've read, I have no desire to read more about this dull woman and probably never will. Save your money and don't bother. If you're a diehard fan, get it from the library first as it doesn't deserve a second read.

Silly me, I figured that after so many reviewers' complaints about Hutch being stuck behind a desk in the last couple novels, the author was going to make his (and Priscilla's) many fans happy by writing a story of her early years. Made sense to me, as it seemed an easy way to get our favorite female star ship pilot back in the pilot's seat and give us an exciting and engrossing story, like the first awesome books in this series.

But no, I was wrong. As soon as Hutch graduates and receives her pilot's license, the author puts her...wait for it...behind a desk. Really? I waited 2 years and paid $11 so I could see her behind a desk again? Oh, sure enough, later on she does get to fly again, but not as the "pilot in charge" and she never gets to do anything even remotely interesting, much less daring or exciting. For the most part, any time she's flying it's under the command of someone else, and it's the someone else that makes the decisions comes up with the solutions to the problems of the day. Hutch's presence adds virtually nothing to the story; it would be the same if Joe the no-name boring starship pilot took her place.

Let's try to be clear: Mr. McDevitt - We LOVE the old Hutch, the one in the pilot's seat. The one who explored strange new worlds, who made decisions, who took risks; the one without whom all would be lost. PLEASE bring her back. I think if you write one more "Hutch behind a desk" story I may have to give up on you.

For McDevitt I thought this story was a bit boring mainly because it read more like a romantic novel than a full science fiction story. The parts that were good were when McDevitt is discussing his recurrent theme, "are we alone?". Unfortunately this occurs all too infrequently. Most of the book is devoted to the protagonist's, Priscilla Hutchins, personal life. I found those parts of the book to be particularly dragged out and not interesting. I don't really care about her love life or her dating rituals. I read McDevitt to explore the "are we alone theme" and if we are, why?

There is also a subplot about terrorists which I figured out very early in the book and one is left with...alright just get to it and put us out of our misery. We all know who did it and why, why drag it out?

Any other author I probably would have given this 1 star, but because it is McDevitt and because I (usually) enjoy his work so much I threw in two extra stars. If you're a real McDevitt fan I'd say go ahead and read it just to compete the set, but if you're not I'd pass.

As an officer of the Academy, Priscilla Hutchins has been the protagonist (or _a_ protagonist) of half a dozen novels by Jack McDevitt. Now, he takes us to the beginning of her career, before she was even with the Academy.

The novel begins as her training as an interstellar pilot comes to an end. On her final training mission, she becomes involved in the rescue of some schoolgirls trapped by a terrorist bomb and becomes something of a hero.

The terrorists want the Kosmik corporation to stop terraforming the planet Selika, a world with a biosphere of its own, and their continued actions are a major part of the plot.

The other protagonist of this book is Jake, her mentor on that training mission. He retires from piloting because of that rescue, but can't stay away despite falling in love with a ground-based woman. His arc is tragic; Priscilla's triumphant. More or less.

I didn't enjoy it _quite_ as much as I do some of McDevitt's other work, but that leaves a lot of enjoyment.

This is a rather typical McDevitt’s science fiction novel: well written, pleasant to read, with a likable hero (Priscilla Hutchins in this case), slow-going, except in a few very well written action scenes. There is a close encounter with aliens, which ends up very disappointingly, which is also typical of McDevitt’s aliens. He creates great expectations with alien encounters to invariably end disappointingly. His descriptions of a relatively near future, from the point of view of people living their lives immersed in a “future” that for them it is of course the “present” is excellent as always, as well as his realistic descriptions of bureaucrats and politicians and astronauts, and the fights for budgeting an expensive space exploration program.

Jack McDevitt writes great science fiction, fast paced, exciting, full of all the edge of your seat sense of wonder every SF fan looks for in a novel. But what McDevitt writes best are people, characters who you not only care about, but who seem real. These are everyday people filled with the virtues and flaws that make up all of us. There are no black and white characters in one of his novels, no evil villains or shining heroes, just real people trying to do their best in impossible situations. Anyone who thinks good science fiction can't be about character needs to pick up a copy of Starhawk and discover for themselves just how good modern SF can be.

Be warned though, the novel's resolution might not be the one you want, but it is the one that makes sense for the story. I hope he writes a few more 'Hutch prequels.' I guarantee I'll be in line to read them.

I have read almost everything written by Jack McDevitt. His mix of science fiction, mystery, adventure and xeno-archeology always assures me a "good read." Likewise, I loved Starhawk. I could not put it down. It is beautifully written, with a clear narrative that sweeps you into another world, the world of space travel and the possible discovery of alien civilizations and forms of life.Plus, along with the adventures, there also is a great amount of personality development. I grew to care for the characters and their fates. I especially liked the strong female characters and recognized the current analogs to the future political issues framed by the characters and the news quotes. At the end, I had "book hangover" - I did not want to leave Hutch and her world. Please keep writing, Jack. More!

Is McDevitt running out of ideas? His early books, especially Talent for War, were far more interesting reads, with genuine puzzles and some measure of suspense. I know that he is not and has never really been considered an action author, like Stirling or Pournelle. But this present book is so banal.

There are minor plot complications. One is where a ship brings food supplies to an expedition that is running short. The resolution of this involves the "gripping" dialog of the rescuer watching them "chow down" and getting a good feeling. Most banal and puerile. No drama and boring narrative. This is just one example but typifies the entire book.

Starhawk (2013) is the seventh SF novel in the Hutch series, following Cauldron. By internal chronology, however, this novel precedes The Engines of God, the initial volume in this sequence.

In this novel, Priscilla Hutchins is an interstellar pilot trainee. She is from Princeton, New Jersey, within the North American Union.

Leon Carlson is an engineer on Union Space Station.

Jake Loomis is an interstellar pilot. He is checking Priscilla's qualification for an interstellar license.

Joshua Miller is an interstellar pilot. He is the captain of the Gremlin.

In this story, Priscilla is studying and eating in the Skyview on Union in June, 2105. Leon asks to sit at the table and she clears a space. Then three people come into the lounge.

Leon identifies the three as employees of Kosmik. Then he tells her about how Kosmik's terraforming of Selika is killing the lifeforms. He talks loud enough for the Kosmik folks to hear his remarks. One starts to come over, but another hold him back.

Six months later, Priscilla is piloting the Copperhead for the next stage of her qualification tests. Jake has her in the pilot seat during a jump through transdimensional space. Suddenly the lights go out and Benny -- the onboard AI -- reports a power outage. Priscilla replaces a line and the power system recovers.

As she is going back to the pilot's seat, Benny reports a radio signal. Jake says that it is not part of the tests.

Priscilla and Benny locate the signal's source as nine lightyears away. They jump to a location near the original point and find a lander. A body occupies the pilot seat. They learn that the dead man had been the only survivor of a breakdown nine years before.

They also learn that the ship crew had met an alien ship at Talios III. The crews managed to communicate some basic ideas. Both ships agreed to rendezvous in November of that year.

Jake and Priscilla go to Talios III, but no aliens were there. However, they had returned and then left a satellite with a message. Jake and Priscilla send the information back to Union.

Jake is telling Priscilla her next task when a message comes from Union. The Gremlin has a bomb onboard. Someone had called in an anonymous tip.

When they reach Barton's World, Jake and Priscilla discover that the Gremlin is carrying twelve passengers, eleven teenage girls and a teacher. The Copperhead cannot hold that many extra passengers, but they all crown aboard.

The Sydney Thompson is also enroute to the damaged Gremlin. Yet it is several days away in transdimensional space plus some system voyage time. The fifteen people on the Copperhead are using up the air.

This tale follows Priscilla during her first months as a licensed interstellar pilot. Jake certifies her before leaving Barton's World, but her licensing ceremony is weeks away. She does find a job with Kosmik that starts before the official ceremony.

After one voyage to Selika, Priscilla refuses the next run. 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 interstellar voyages, political activists, and a bit of romance. Read and enjoy!

-Arthur W. Jordin

I am new to Jack McDevitt and Priscilla Hutchins, so it may be, as the book is clearly a prequel, that I am missing things that more familiar readers will pick up and enjoy. For a newcomer, though, this was not a great introduction. While I liked the book enough to finish it, I do not think I will be reading another.

The book follows two star pilots, rookie Priscilla and veteran Jake, over a period of several months from late 2195 into late 2196. I'm having trouble describing the plot beyond that because there really isn't one. It is more like a series of disparate events, domestic and professional, that happen to occur to the main characters in the book. It's almost as if the author had several books in mind and collected the opening chapters to each of them in one place. The writing is workmanlike and the book itself was full of setups that merited an entire novel - I particularly liked the alien encounter in chapter 1 and Jake's adventures on Orfano, "the Midnight World" - but none of these was ever fully developed, which is a shame because many of them were intriguing. The hope that something might come of them kept me turning the pages but I was ultimately left disappointed.

Character development was cursory (everyone sounded the same) and the situations created by the author to generate tension seemed forced. Would you really travel to deep space with only one pilot and no one capable of fixing anything? Would you really fly all that way without a backup lander? What engineer would design a spacecraft so defectively that the computers and engines have no off switch? Questions like that arose continually and marred my enjoyment of the story.

Not a bad book by any means, but it could, and should, have been better.

This is the "beginning" of the Priscilla Hutchins story in McDevitt's Academy series, but it is definitely not the place to start for someone who has not read the rest of the entries. As a stand-alone novel it would not really hold up well--a lack of action and a couple of not-really-resolved mysteries would be a hindrance. As a prequel to the Hutchins saga, though, it largely works, providing a decent backstory to her later adventures without contradicting anything that happens "later." This is more of a character-driven novel--there are some moments of tension and suspense, but the main focus is on pointing the young Hutch toward her later self.

There are a couple of enigmatic alien encounters that don't get tidily wrapped up--one nice possibility is that at some time a new Hutch novel set back in her "present" could bring these incidents back up again and to some sort of conclusion. Otherwise, it's hard to see where any further novels in this universe could go after the way the previous book (Cauldron, I believe) wrapped things up.

If you like McDevitt's style and have read the earlier Hutchins books, then this is worth your time. If not, you'd be better off starting with the others in the series, or maybe his Alex Benedict series, instead.

This is essentially a prequel in a series of books about an interstellar pilot. For anyone new to the series they should read this one first. But if you've already read the others, then this one is not essential since you already know the main character and the central plot to this one pales compared to the individual plots and series arc of the others. The author may simply have run out of plausible, even for science fiction, stories to continue series in a progressive timeline and so jumped back in this one. Nothing wrong with the book. Reads easily, so an OK vacation read.

I do not... repeat.. do not write reviews. I have probably written three in my lifetime.. but I had to comment on how SORELY unhappy I was to have picked up this book. I will not go into the grisly details, as others have already done that but OMG... I can power through a book in a day.. this I struggled with for almost a week. Only by sheer force of will did I finish it. Never has a story left me wanting for SO much more. Really? This makes me want to cross this author off my buy list forever. Seriously, get it from the library. It will be the angriest 8 bucks you ever spent... I would return it if I could...#EpicFail

The book seems to be several weak plot lines arbitrarily thrown together. The plot lines are unconnected, undeveloped and for the most part just left hanging. For example there are not one but two first contact threads, both of which are inexplicably and unceremoniously dropped. (These first contact threads might be developed in other books. I don't remember if they are. In any event, they shouldn't be dropped into this book just to provide a little background.) Much of the book is devoted to Hutch's and another character's uninteresting emotional lives. Character development is nil. I've read most of McDevitt's SF and fans of the author can safely skip this one. P.S. The future headlines gimmick at the end of each chapter has become tiresome.

This was my first Jack McDevitt novel.
And, my last.

The writing is mediocre.
The plot moves very slowly as if the this entire 400-page novel is merely one chapter in a 8000-page novel. Seriously, am I expected to read 20 books to get some excitement and a conclusion?

Book number seven of a seven book series. Storywise, this is actually the first book in the series. MMPB.

Good story about the beginnings of an interstellar pilot. A few loose ends left and seems to jump around a lot.

Awful novel. No real plot worth mentioning, dull and inane dialogue between uninteresting characters. Slogged to page 270 and then gave up. I'll certainly think twice before I buy another McDevitt novel.

The book seems to be several weak plot lines arbitrarily thrown together. The plot lines are unconnected, undeveloped and for the most part just left hanging. For example there are not one but two first contact threads, both of which are inexplicably and unceremoniously dropped. (These first contact threads might be developed in other books. I don't remember if they are. In any event, they shouldn't be dropped into this book just to provide a little background.) Much of the book is devoted to Hutch's and another character's uninteresting emotional lives. Character development is nil. I've read most of McDevitt's SF and fans of the author can safely skip this one. P.S. The future headlines gimmick at the end of each chapter has become tiresome.

It looks like Jack has run out of stories. There aren't many novels up to 'A Talent for War". A wonderful creation. And I know it's hard to keep up the successes of our past sometimes. His latest has no strong through line. You simply don't care about anyone. He starts one story, then another with no apparent connection.

I've reread his early novels at least twice. In them he creates