Sunday, November 25, 2007

5 of 6

For our fifth installment, I give you:

Bones to Ashes by Kathy Reichs

What they say:

from
Barnes and Noble

Synopsis
Temperance Brennan, like her creator Kathy Reichs, is a brilliant, sexy forensic anthropologist called on to solve the toughest cases. But for Tempe, the discovery of a young girl's skeleton in Acadia, Canada, is more than just another assignment. Évangéline, Tempe's childhood best friend, was also from Acadia. Named for the character in the Longfellow poem, Évangéline was the most exotic person in Tempe's eight-year-old world. When Évangéline disappeared, Tempe was warned not to search for her, that the girl was "dangerous."
Thirty years later, flooded with memories, Tempe cannot help wondering if this skeleton could be the friend she lost so many years ago. And what is the meaning of the strange skeletal lesions found on the bones of the young girl?
Meanwhile, Tempe's beau, Ryan, investigates a series of cold cases. Three girls dead. Four missing. Could the New Brunswick skeleton be part of the pattern? As Tempe draws on the latest advances in forensic anthropology to penetrate the past, Ryan hunts down a serial predator.

The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio
A deft hand at balancing the emotional light with the dark, Reichs links the enchanting Evangeline and her Acadian heritage to the unsolved cases of dead and missing girls that have stumped the police for years. And even now, 10 books into the series, Tempe's strung-out affair with Detective-Lieutenant Andrew Ryan still hangs on the tensions that confound lovers in an atmosphere of violent death.



What I say: I've read around the net how people tend to be turned off by Reichs' use of technical jargon. I may not know what all the words mean (that's what a dictionary is for people) but I think it adds to the story. For me, it makes me feel the importance of what is being said. Reichs' latest installment to the Temperance Brennan series is full of jargon, suspense, and intense character interaction. In this book, however, we get to see more of Tempe's past which I enjoyed.

The Tempe/Ryan drama I thought was completely annoying. It was almost as if Reichs forgot she was writing a novel and not an installment on a soap opera. This would be my only gripe with the book.

Overall, it was a good book in the series. I gave it a 3 out of 5 on
GoodReads.

2 comments:

  1. I would like to try this series out one of these days. I enjoyed Patricia Cornwell's early Kay Scarpetta books and have been told this Kathy Reich's series is just as good if not better. I did watch the first episode of Bones and didn't care for it, but I hear it's quite different from the books. Thanks for the review, Trisha!

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  2. I'm not sure if I would say that Reichs' series is better. I like them both but I think that I like the Scarpetta series more. Then again, I'm only on book 7 of the series and everyone seems to stress "early" when when it comes to the series.

    As for Bones, it's completely different from the books. The only thing that is the same is Temperance Brennen's name and that she is a forensic anthropologist. Everything else from her past, to the setting, to the other characters is different. If you didn't know that the show is "based" on the books, you wouldn't be able to tell from watching it. I LOVE the show and I like the books.

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