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A review by confessions_of_a_bookaholic
A Conspiracy of Bones by Kathy Reichs
3.0
Tempe Brennan is battling with migraines and experiencing what she thinks may be hallucinations following neurosurgery for an aneurysm. She's supposed to be taking it easy, but when she receives a text message containing crime scene photos from an unknown source, she can't ignore them. Tempe isn't supposed to be investigating though, and her interference re-ignites an old feud. It's a race against the clock for Brennan to identify the dead man and find out what happened, otherwise she risks losing it all. The worst thing is she doesn't know who to trust, including herself.
It's a long long time since I read a Tempe Brennan novel so I had to do a bit of research and figure out what had happened before I started this one. I don't think it was a conscious choice to take a break, I think I just hadn't realised that more books had been released. This one wasn't what I was expecting though, and I have to say that I didn't enjoy it as much as I remember enjoying earlier books.
The main thing that I struggled with was that there was a lot of info dumping. I'm kind of fascinated with conspiracy theories and the stories behind them (not a believer just interested in the thought processes) so I should have loved this. There was just too much information, so the book was imbalanced. Reichs covered a lot of theories, meaning that the book was heavily focussed on this side of things, and thus there was a lot less of the investigative side of things than I would have liked.
Another thing I noticed is that there are a lot of acronyms and colloquial words or phrases used throughout the book. Some are explained (usually the ones I already knew) and others aren't. I found this made for hard reading as things didn't flow naturally.
In terms of the characters Tempe is really not her usual self here. That is part and parcel of the storyline, she's acting out of character and we're not sure if this is due to her illness or other factors. It works well to a point - a lot of the investigation for this book is done outside of the legal procedures, and I couldn't correlate that with the Tempe of previous books. She's very gung ho and risks the integrity of the investigation by not following protocols. A giant no no in my eyes!
I did get a small amount of satisfaction to my curiosity on the Ryan situation, so that was a positive.
All up I thought this was very middle of the road. The basis for the story is a great idea, but the execution didn't work in my opinion. I think the cospiracy theories took up too many pages and not enough of the book was dedicated to the actual story.
Trigger warnings: Paedophilia, child abuse
It's a long long time since I read a Tempe Brennan novel so I had to do a bit of research and figure out what had happened before I started this one. I don't think it was a conscious choice to take a break, I think I just hadn't realised that more books had been released. This one wasn't what I was expecting though, and I have to say that I didn't enjoy it as much as I remember enjoying earlier books.
The main thing that I struggled with was that there was a lot of info dumping. I'm kind of fascinated with conspiracy theories and the stories behind them (not a believer just interested in the thought processes) so I should have loved this. There was just too much information, so the book was imbalanced. Reichs covered a lot of theories, meaning that the book was heavily focussed on this side of things, and thus there was a lot less of the investigative side of things than I would have liked.
Another thing I noticed is that there are a lot of acronyms and colloquial words or phrases used throughout the book. Some are explained (usually the ones I already knew) and others aren't. I found this made for hard reading as things didn't flow naturally.
In terms of the characters Tempe is really not her usual self here. That is part and parcel of the storyline, she's acting out of character and we're not sure if this is due to her illness or other factors. It works well to a point - a lot of the investigation for this book is done outside of the legal procedures, and I couldn't correlate that with the Tempe of previous books. She's very gung ho and risks the integrity of the investigation by not following protocols. A giant no no in my eyes!
I did get a small amount of satisfaction to my curiosity on the Ryan situation, so that was a positive.
All up I thought this was very middle of the road. The basis for the story is a great idea, but the execution didn't work in my opinion. I think the cospiracy theories took up too many pages and not enough of the book was dedicated to the actual story.
Trigger warnings: Paedophilia, child abuse