The cover blurb compares Allen Steele's work with Robert Heinlein. An apt comparison as I felt on more than one occasion that I was reading a Heinlein book from my high school library. Many times, as well, I was reminded of Alan Dean Foster.

Hex is a continuation of Steele's Coyote series and the first of the series that I have read. The book is a good read but I doubt that I will go back to the Coyote novels. In the end I just felt the book to be too corny and the characters too obvious and predictable.

I love the big universe, space opera with lots of aliens, advanced tech and big ideas but this book just didn't do it for me. ( )

I listened to the unabridged audio edition; however, Amazon will not allow me to link to that, so I've linked to the paperback edition.

Andromeda Carson, captain of the Coyote merchant ship Montoya, is getting bored with standard commercial runs where, due to the fact that humans aren't yet fully accepted or trusted in the Talis, she and the crew rarely even get to disembark, much less explore. She's beginning to reluctantly contemplate retirement when her boss, Ted Harker, approaches her with an unexpected proposal. The most mysterious race in the Talis, the danui, have indirectly approached Coyote with an offer of a human-habitable planet in their home solar system.

It's a stunning offer, but they need an experienced and reliable ship and crew to make the first journey there and determine whether this too-good-to-be-true offer is real. The danui system, after all, appears to have a gas giant close in to its primary--a "hot Jupe"--and such systems aren't noted for having a plethora of smaller, rocky, potentially habitable worlds. There also appears to be a rather strange dust nebula around the star.

Of course Carson agrees to take her ship on this potentially risky reconnaissance. Then her life is further enlivened by the news that her estranged son is a member of the Explorers' Corp team that will be joining her.

Steele is a master storyteller, and gives us a wonderful tour of the unexpected reality of the danui home system. Saying anything else would be a spoiler. If you like solidly constructed sf grounded in good science, with good characters and plot, you'll enjoy this.

Recommended. ( )

I think its time this series ended. A pleasant enough read, but the stories that take place off of Coyote really need have no linkage with Coyote at all--they are generally decent sci-fi adventures. I like Allen Steele's work, and I hope he comes up with his next great thing, because this one is done. ( )

The book is a continuation of the Coyote novels and is the 8th in the series. The main quality for Hex is the technology being explored in the narrative. That the Coyote leadership allows/chooses a bored and nearing retirement starship captain and a corporate vice president to represent a whole planet in it's first contact with another race is a lunacy developed by the author and to his credit. The sense of entitlement, selfishness, rudeness shown by the humans as they stumbled through the story and Hex, was the lesson from the book. It is certainly an excellent addition to the Coyote universe. ( )

Standalone novel from the Coyote Universe. It was enjoyable but not as special as the other books in this series were. I hope Allen Steele does more stories in the Coyote Universe but with more tie ins to his prior works ( )