Deepsix by Jack McDevitt

This is a story about a planet that is about to be destroyed by another planet that is due to collide into it in a few weeks. There are some ships in the vacinity to watch the event - one full of scientists and one tourists. As they're waiting for the pending collision, they notice that there are buildings on the planet, that was previously thought devoid of intelligent life. They don't have any ship-to-planet landers available, so have to send an emergency broadcast to find someone nearby to help investigate. After the investigation begins, disaster inevitably strikes, and the rest of the story is about their attempts to escape before the planets collide.

I enjoyed the book - it was pretty exciting, a good adventure story. There weren't a lot of new ideas in the book, but there was pretty good characterization. My favorite was the character of Gregory MacAllister. McDevitt invented in his character a famous writer/scholar who had interesting things to say about the human condition. Sometimes when authors invent great characters like this, they'll show other characters deeply admiring him and saying how great his works are, but never actually show the works. But here McDevitt actually shows us MacAllister's comments and writing, which were actually pretty cool! Each chapter begins with a quote from MacAllister, even before we meet his character. I actually enjoyed his character more than I did the main character.

Rating: 1/4 (entertaining throwaway read)