Cauldron

September 24, 2007
Space opera specialist McDevitt shoehorns two traditional SF plots into his latest Academy novel (after 2006's Odyssey
), doing both stories a disservice. Youthful physicist Jon Silvestri persuades the philanthropic Prometheus Foundation to back tests of a risky interstellar drive that's vastly superior to current technology. Soon series keystone Priscilla Hutchins finds herself aboard a newly outfitted ship dispatched to the galactic core, seeking the source of a million-year-old interstellar menace. The cast is uniformly likable if prickly, but no true protagonist emerges from McDevitt's ensemble. Some sections are leisurely, others rushed. Readers see little of the star drive research, and the space voyage is triply sidetracked—to a planet of cheerfully technophobic aliens, an abandoned world with unexpected dangers and a black hole with a tantalizing secret—before reaching its stated objective, where the threat's origin is summarily introduced and disposed of in the last 60 pages. Despite considerable inventiveness and an enthusiastic pro-space agenda, the story remains superficial, especially frustrating from a writer of McDevitt's caliber.

November 15, 2007
By the middle of the 23rd century, starflight has become a thing of the past, relegated to private eccentrics as inefficient and fiscally unjustifiable, until a young man, John Silvestri, approaches the Prometheus Foundation claiming to have produced a star drive that makes travel to distant stars almost instantaneous. Demonstrating his claim, John enables the Prometheus Foundation to journey to the heart of the galaxy, a seething tumult of stars, strange omega clouds, and an enormous black holethe Cauldron. Accompanying John and a chosen few scientists and researchers is Priscilla Hutchinson, a former pilot for the now-defunct Academy of Science and Technology and an expert on the many dangers that threaten their journey. Nebula Award winner McDevitt's novels featuring Hutchinson ("Odyssey" display his talent for character building and seamlessly blending hard science with sf action/adventure. Highly recommended.

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2007
Starship pilot Patricia Hutch Hutchinson jockeys a desk while enthusiasm for space travel dwindles. It doesnt help that a recent mission to investigate the mysterious alien weapons called omega clouds ends with a billion-year-old artifacts destruction and near loss of a starship crew. Support for Hutchs space exploration foundation has about evaporated when physicist Jon Silvestri produces a new star drive that puts previously remote systems in easy reach, reigniting space tourism. Hutch joins a small team to track the omega clouds to their source in the Cauldron, a churning star cluster at the galaxys core. Balancing scientific speculation and colorful characters, McDevitt offers another riveting vision of humanitys stellar future.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)