Throwback Thursday: Echo

I know it has been a while since I have done a Throwback Thursday post. I have just been consumed with all new reads that I haven’t really taken the time to re-read something. But to be honest, nothing has been calling out to me for a re-read. I have been going back over my Dresden Files reviews for Summer Knight and Grave Peril, but this time I wanted to reread something different, so I picked up an Alex Benedict book. Today’s throwback is Echo by Jack McDevitt. I have read the full Alex Benedict series (admittedly, out of order), and I have reread Polaris and Seeker more than once. Let’s get right to it and dive in.

If you are not familiar with the Alex Benedict series, he is a relic hunter in the future. Way in the future. Thousands of years. Relic hunter is not the best description. He finds artifacts and antiquities and sells them. That’s how he makes a living. Because of when these novels take place, humans have spread through the neighboring stars, where there have been lots of failed colonies and lost human civilizations. Alex has a partner, Chase, who is Watson to his Sherlock. Most of the series is from her point of view, written as a memoir of their adventures.

The Setup and the Sunset Tuttle Dilemma

Echo is the fifth book in the series. I mentioned I read these books out of order, and I feel like it is “mostly” ok to do that. The lore is not so thick that you would be confused on what is happening. These books all start with a preface that sets up a mysterious scene that hooks the reader. In Echo, we are dropped into a scene where Rachel Bannister has come to her friend and mentor Somerset “Sunset” Tuttle for help. She is distraught. Tuttle drops the party he was throwing to assist her. For what? We as the reader have no clue, but it is the intro into the mystery we follow Alex and Chase to pursue.

Smash cut to the current day, and Alex and Chase have been notified of a stone tablet with strange, indecipherable markings. The object was used as a lawn ornament at a house once owned by Sunset Tuttle, a famous but widely dismissed explorer who spent his life searching the galaxy for intelligent alien life.

I initially had an issue here. In this universe, humans have made contact with an alien race (the Ashiyyur/Mutes). So why is Tuttle a character that people dismiss? However, stepping back into the lore, humanity has only ever found one other intelligent race in thousands of years. Tuttle spent his entire life chasing rumors of a second species, constantly raising false alarms, and failing publicly every time. He was essentially the boy who cried wolf.

The Mystery of the Stone Tablet

Anyway, there is this tablet that seems to be intriguing, belonging to someone who hunted for other intelligent species. And then it disappears before Chase can go and pick it up. The person who grabbed it before Chase and Alex… you guessed it, Rachel Bannister. Rachel gives evasive answers, claims the tablet is gone, and repeatedly tries to discourage further questions.

From there, the story becomes less about the tablet as an object and more about the secret surrounding it.

[🚨 SPOILER ALERT: Major plot points and the ending are discussed below! 🚨]

Alex and Chase begin reconstructing Tuttle’s final years and Rachel’s role in them. They learn that Rachel once worked as a pilot for World’s End, a luxury space tour company. The central question becomes clear: if Tuttle found what he spent his entire life searching for, why did he never announce it?

Because official records provide only fragments, Alex and Chase gather old holographic recordings from passengers who traveled with World’s End. At the midpoint, the stakes are raised dramatically: Rachel jumps, killing herself to cover up or pay for what she was part of. This throws Chase into moral turmoil. She decides to leave the relic business because she can’t deal with what has happened or justify why Rachel killed herself.

A Mid-Book Slump

After her stint in another job, Chase finally comes back to Alex. Through astronomical detective work, they find the system that Rachel visited on her last tour, nicknamed Echo. They travel there and investigate the planets of the system.

This is where I get a little brutal about my review. Up until this point, I was a little bored. My brain had actually edited out how long it took to get to the exciting part. The book would have been much better if they were forced to go on more clue hunting off-world earlier on.

On the second planet they explore, they find what they mistake for humans, are shot down, and crash next to friendly inhabitants. While waiting for rescue, an assassin from earlier in the book comes to try to kill them again. With the help of the natives, they take care of the assassin and are rescued. Once home, Alex and Chase confront the former owner of the World’s End tour company. He admits he was complicit in the death of that planet when they watched an asteroid hit it and did nothing. The final twist? The inhabitants Alex and Chase discovered are in fact aliens. Tuttle found his aliens and kept it quiet for Rachel.

The Final Verdict

Here is my main criticism of the book. Why were there assassins after Alex and Chase? It seems like the tour didn’t cause the impact of the asteroid, they just didn’t prevent it because they didn’t know there was a civilization on the planet. So what? Why was that a huge crime that needed to be covered up to the extent of hiring hitmen? Yes, they should have sent rescue once they discovered there were aliens, but they didn’t cause the disaster. This felt like a forced “thriller” subplot injected into a quiet archaeological mystery, and the villain’s motivations just didn’t logically justify murder.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The “future archeology” premise remains a highly unique and fun sci-fi concept.
• The opening hook and the mystery of the stone tablet genuinely pull you in.
• Alex and Chase exploring other planets is fun and exciting.

Cons:

• Pacing issues; the book drags and takes far too long to get off-world.
• A forced assassin subplot that feels out of place.
• The villains’ motivations for a deadly cover-up don’t logically hold up under scrutiny.

Have you read any of the Alex Benedict series? I really like the idea of a future archeologist in space discovering failed human civilizations across planets. What is your favorite Benedict book? Let me know in the comments!