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The Eternity Artifact by L.E. Modesitt Jr
01/07/2006 . Source: Paul Hanley 
pub: TOR. 367 page hardback. Price: $25.95 (US), $34.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-765-31464-9. Buy The Eternity Artifact in the USA - or Buy The Eternity Artifact in the UK  check out website: www.tor.com
The author, L.E. Modesitt Jr, is a very prolific writer with lots of good, entertaining stories to his credit. 'The Eternity Artifact', you'll be pleased to hear, is no exception.
Humanity has expanded across the stars but is as fragmented as ever with a variety of empires, some based on fundamentalist religions, at loggerheads with each other. This book is the story of an expedition by one such government, The Comity, to recover an artefact believed to be on an ancient world hurtling towards a black hole. This is military SF with an expedition having to fight every step of the way to get to its goal.
Instead of a single protagonist, who is the viewpoint character, there are a number including a spy and saboteur, fighter pilots, academics, artists and so forth which gives a great deal of depth to the story. Modesitt Jr does tend to bring in politics, religion economics and so forth into his stories and ground his characters in their own world which I think makes them better books for it.
That said, this is an adventure story with some mystery about it as what is happening is gradually revealed to the characters. The military parts are well done, which are mostly space warfare and as the author was a US Navy pilot I imagine his experiences have coloured his writing. The story has lots of twists and turns and is a successful book both for a satisfactory tale and lots of action for those who like military SF.
I do not want to spoil the story by giving away any details of the plot. Suffice to say this is a well-written adventure story with plenty of action and if you like military SF or just a good tale you will enjoy it.
Paul Hanley
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