I have to put this up front, if you are not a fan of gory murders full of graphic detail in your book, or get bored with scientific theories in your fiction this may not be the book for you.

This book is the first collaborative work of Preston and Child, and also the first in the Pendergast series. Unlike most of the books in this series it cannot be read as a standalone and is followed on by Reliquary; the other two books that must be read in order in the series are Dance of Death/Book of the Dead. But I digress, I’m reviewing Relic not the entire, to date, 14 book series. I picked this up on the recommendation of a friend and, not knowing what to expect, was taken by surprise; it is the first book written by these two Authors I have read.

I found the characters both intriguing and infuriating at the same time, and was pleasantly surprised to see that the aforementioned Pendergast was not actually the main protagonist in this book, rather took a secondary place to another. I thought this was a great way of introducing a character that would eventually become the focus of a lengthy series, rather than having him leap out of the pages at the reader full bore and in your face. It actually is one of the reasons I will probably continue to read more in this series, he intrigued me and made me want to find out more about him. In creating the characters in this book, the Authors supplied enough details about them to allow the readers imagination to fill in the blanks or speculate as to what might follow. It is not only Pendergast that the Authors decided to just give ‘tasters’ to the character personality, they applied this to all the characters in the book and, while I found it an interesting way to lead into a series, I would have preferred to have more background on some of those characters who were probably not going to make it out of the end jacket alive, and this is the reasoning behind my 4 thumbs review.

It is a fast paced book, full of twists and turns that I really didn’t see coming. This edge of the seat action kept me turning the pages until to my surprise I had finished the book in a day. The idea of the entirety of the story line taking place in a Museum, and the suspense this brings with it makes this a book a would recommend to anyone who enjoys a book full of twists, turns and a little humour in places.


Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2015/07/13/review-relic-pendergast-1-douglas-preston-...





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Pretty good, I suppose. Not my usual kind of fare but I really like Pendergast. ( )

Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human. I’ve been meaning to read this for forever, and now that I have… I dunno. I hit the halfway point and literally quit reading it, decided to give up forever and marked the book DNF and done. And then decided I could at least follow the major exhibit’s opening, and ended up finishing the book, and was kind of pleased that I had. While it felt like X-Files, the investigations felt incredibly forced and like an awful lot of running around with very little to show for it, and I found that a huge boring drag. The action’s good when it happens, at least. Not really all that scary for me -- very little atmosphere, very little build-up. And I wish we had seen more of Pendergast, who is nominally the lead for the series, and less of Margo. ( )

I absolutely loved this book. The story kept me on the edge of my seat and kept me reading so that I could find out what was going to happen. ( )

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