Bone Mountain

When I first came across Eliot Pattison's mysteries set in Tibet, I was thrilled. Tibetan culture is something I've been interested in for years, in fact ever since I first read Tintin in Tibet. My love for Tibet only increased when I discovered Tibetan dogs (but that's another story.)

Like the two earlier books in the series, Bone Mountain was fascinating, but sad. Parts of it read like a fantasy because of the incredibly interesting and unique culture and lifestyle of (some of) the Tibetans. Pattison's 'sleuth' Han Chinese Shan, first came to Tibet when he was deported to a gulag. He survived the harsh conditions in the camp by embracing Tibetan religion and culture (the two are completely interwoven, so it's hard, if not impossible to show more separate the two). Bone Mountain deals with the desctruction of Tibet's nature, by the Chinese occupation force. Reading about it almost made me cry. The 'hero' of the book is really Tibetan culture, in many ways illustrated by the characters. They're all unique, fascinating and mostly sympathetic. It's obvious that Pattison has come to care about his Tibetan friends. show less

The further adventures of former inspector Shan Tao Yun, this is more about his path to becoming more of a monk than the actual investigation. I think if I had known that before reading I would have enjoyed the story more, though it probably would be more interesting to someone more interested in the spirituality of the area, or if I was in a more receptive mind at the time, unfortunately I was in the mmental space for a mystery or other light fiction and not really in the headspace for a book that explores the relationship between land and people.

It's an interesting book with a minor sideline in a detective story, much of what drives Shan is his growing spirituality and his lingering curiousity.

The plot of this book gets nearly swept away by the vast cultural and historical detail depicting Tibetan peoples and the occupying Chinese forces over many years. This is not necessarily a flaw--it is part of the fascination of the collected books about Shan the investigator in modern Tibet

If you want to gain some insights into Tibetan-Chinese relations, read this series, starting with The Skull Mantra! It reveals a most-disturbing situation, which will probably change the way you view China. (That from someone with a long-standing love of Asia, which led her to live in Asia for two years!)