An important and interesting science story, somewhat hampered by its presentation. McKee understands the material---the major requirement for such an assignment---and conveys the researchers’ excitement. But when writing about black holes, you need some other word than “holes” to designate gaps in knowledge (para. 3), and estimating a black hole’s mass is not exactly the same as “weighing” it (which suggests putting it on scales---though admittedly the scientists use the same verb). Syntax needs attention too: “Colossal black holes at the centres of galaxies are thought to swallow stars that wander too close to them about once every 10,000 years” has a wobble in the middle. Asking someone to visualize a quadrant of the sky “covering about 40 times the area of the Full Moon” is hard (5 rows of 8?); maybe 6x7, 42, would easier to do. The main problem is the controlling metaphor of devour-swallow-meal: the animation necessarily speeds up a process that is spread over a great many years---and the disparity of scale between the human activity of eating and the immense processes of slow absorption, dissolution, and recombination produces a misleading impression, as if this were an interstellar version of When Sharks Attack. The material is sensibly ordered, ending with a view to future developments; but the difficulty of presenting such cosmic events without falling into inaccurate figurative fallacies has not quite been overcome here. It reads as though it needed one more draft.