The novel “Echo” by Jack McDevitt was published for the first time in 2010. It’s part of the Alex Benedict series.
The antiquities dealer Alex Benedict finds a stone slab with an inscription in an unknown alphabet. The slab belonged to Somerset Tuttle, an eccentric archaeologist who spent his life looking for aliens, but without success. Benedict manages to buy the slab from the current owner but when he goes to pick it turns out that someone had preceded him.
More and more curious, Alex Benedict and his assistant Chase Kolpath try to figure out who has taken the slab but runs into a series of deceptions and lies. The thing is really suspect, also because the traces lead to the involvement of Rachel Bannister, who had been Somerset Tuttle’s lover but if he had discovered an alien species why keep the secret?
“Echo” is the fifth novel in the Alex Benedict series, set almost ten thousand years in the future. Each novel focuses on a specific archaeological sci-fi mystery so you can read them all independently. However, it is clear that reading them all gives the opportunity to have a better understanding of the fictional universe they’re set in and their protagonists.
In “Echo”, Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath investigate the origin of a slab that contains an inscription in an unknown alphabet. In the novels of this series, Jack McDevitt follows a basic formula and then offer some variations in each of them. The basic element of these plots is an archaeological mystery the protagonists are trying to solve. In this novel, they’re hampered by a number of people whose motivations will be clarified at the end.
Despite the archaeological theme, the characters spend most of the story on their planet. Alex Benedict isn’t Indiana Jones and Chase Kolpath isn’t River Song so the story is somewhat a detective story in the sense that the two carry out most of their research on their planet, talking to people who may have useful information. Only in the second part of the novel they travel in search of the planet that is connected to the mystery.
Another element of “Echo” concerns the evolution of the relationship between Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath. Benedict is quite obsessive in his research so he doesn’t give up even when the situation becomes dangerous. Instead, for Chase there’s a limit for everything and at some point she decides to change jobs.
Especially in a series of novels it’s right that there are changes in the lives of the protagonists, otherwise they become flat, especially when the structure of the story is rather formulaic like in the Alex Benedict series. The problem is that the way chosen by Jack McDevitt in “Echo” creates a significant deviation in the plot which slows its pace and decreases the tension.
It doesn’t help that “Echo” is narrated in first person from Chase Kolpath’s point of view. The result is that for a part, albeit reduced, of the novel we don’t know what Alex Benedict is doing and he’s the driving character of the story with his burning desire to solve the mysteries he stumbles in.
It’s much worse for the other characters, who appear and disappear all the time. In the stories narrated in the first person, character development is one of the critical points and honestly in “Echo” most of them are flat. The novel is clearly focused on the search for the origin of the slab but a better development of the villains would have helped keep the tension high.
The biggest problem of “Echo” is in my opinion in its ending, in my opinion almost hastily dismissed and forced.
It’s a shame that “Echo” has those flaws because it had a good potential. As it is, I think it’s a decent novel but not the best by Jack McDevitt so I recommend it only to the fans of this author and the fans of the archaeological sci-fi sub-genre.
