Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60185 in Books
• Published on: 1995-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 432 pages

Customer Reviews

Missing the deadline were we?
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I have liked the mixture of archaeology and space exploration since reading Arthur C Clarkes Rama series many years ago. Although this book was good, it was not in the same league as one of Clarkes.

Archaeologists are excavating an important site on a planet that is due to be terra-formed. Planet Earth is an eco-disaster area and mankind needs to move out. But the universe is not empty of life. Primitive cultures still exist on another world and there are the remains of some major space faring civilisations around scattered around the galaxy. There is also growing evidence of a pattern of repetitive disasters, of biblical proportions, on several planets that appears to destroy whole civilisations.
The hunt is on to follow the clues, discovered at the archaeological sites and subsequently interpreted, to discover the cause of the disasters, whether any of these civilisations have survived and if there are any implications for Earth.

I was rather enjoying the first part of the book. There was a mixture of intrigue and drama with slow character building but it all stops half way through when the story shifts to another planet. Here the story seems to speed up and gets shallower. Some of the drama is absurd because of the blatant stupidity of the characters involved. The science is also shaky.
I started thinking that this book was to be one of a series, the first in a trilogy perhaps. But when the pace sped up in the second half, I got the sinking feeling that the conclusion was coming.

It is a good story but too rushed at the end. Shame.

More spacey fun from McDevitt
This is best of McDevitt's books that i have read. We have his standard small group of intrepid travellers (too small and too intrepid really, but it makes them fun to read about) charging between the stars in pursuit of a hunch that something big is happening and that we need to know about it. They're right of course, and in the face of (the usual) political interference all is ultimately revealed. Okay, it isn't really - The book is quite long already and would have to be one of those tedious great trilogies in order to have space to offer a full explanation. This is a failing really, and prevents the book from becoming more than a decent page-turner - it is certainly that, although some action set-pieces do have a feeling of having been stuffed in to hot the pace up ('hmm, the plot is sagging, lets put everybody in deadly peril for a bit'). Read it anyway though.

This is a great innovative SF novel
On the strength of this novel, I went out and bought everything the author has ever written and enjoyed them all. Engines of God is well written with a fasinating plot regarding the mysterious destruction of alien civilisations. If you enjoy well-written hard SF, then this is a great book for you.