This is the immediate sequel to McDevitt's The Engines of God. Unlike that novel, which I read some time ago and then recently revisited via an audiobook, this one I read some time ago and haven't thought much about it since, so my recollection of it has dwindled somewhat and I had to refresh it a bit for this review. I do recall the basic story - just not a lot of the details.
It's set in 2204, and on the negative side, the second book in this series suffers from everything I despise about a series: that the subsequent volumes are really a warmed-over redux of the first volume, which is only a prologue to begin with. In this particular case, there's too much of the first book being repeated here, evidently in the hope that readers won't notice it's the same dinner with a different dressing: doomed planet (it was a moon in the last book) with people trapped on it (same), who do dumb things (same) such as wasting time on a formal burial on a planet that's going to be destroyed anyway, and finally, archaeology with a dramatic deadline looming.
That complaint aired, there was enough in here for me, having read the first volume, to continue with this series. I never did go back to re-read any of this series (apart from the aforementioned audiobook), so maybe that should tell you something! But here a rogue gas giant is threatening a planet with destruction and Priscilla Hutchins is once again the one who's on the spot. She takes a bewildering array of unimportant (to the story) characters there to study the wildlife and flora and also the remnants of a previous civilization. These minor characters get far too much airtime, and she really becomes a minor character in her own story. On top of that, the book is too long, but evidently I found it entertaining enough on my first read through to pursue this series into the next volume.
