SOJALS rating:

Good (3/5)

I first read this on the 16th February 2002.

Benjamin Knowlton is an astronomer.at the High Energy Astrophysics Center in Hawaii. His wife, Channing, is dying of cancer. It's a tough time for both of them.

Amy Major is a post-doctoral research assistant at the center. She's spotted something rather odd up in the skies. It looks a little like a gamma-ray burster, but there are some strange differences. Benjamin seizes this chance to do a little real science and perhaps take his mind off his problems. His long-time rival Kingsley Dart, sensing something interesting, also involves himself.

So now the stage is set for the entrance of the Eater, an anomalous black-hole that devours worlds. It's coming to the Solar system. It may be coming to the Earth, and if it does, humanity will be destroyed.

I read Benford's books with some reluctance. They're interesting, and the ideas and the science are imaginative. Normally I find them a little slow and, well, boring. However this book is different. I enjoyed it more the more I read (perhaps simply my prejudice fading). T

he characters are rounded and human. The ending is exciting. I particularly liked the way that Kingsley is seen differently by different people. Of course, Channing herself is rather superb, but then I have a soft spot for tragic, beautiful, female astronauts.

Excellent stuff.