Lorraine's Reviews > Bones to Ashes

I'm not sure if I've become more critical since the last Kathy Reichs book I read, or if this book is simply less stellar. I certainly enjoyed many parts of it, and overall it was an interesting forensic investigation, but it has a few significant weaknesses.

My main complaint is that Reichs is inconsistent with her target audience. There's enough science in the book to suggest the reader is intelligent and interested in the scientific details and explanations -- a fair assumption, given the genre and 'gimmick' of the main character. I can appreciate the explanations, even if it seems hokey that every time Brennan talks to another expert for test results, they give her a crash course on their specialty. (In real life, do they do that? Does the anthropologist really care?) Okay, so the reader has a few brains. Then why the heck does Reichs summarize the case so often? Once or twice in the first quarter of the book makes sense, but it seemed to happen more often here. My annoyance came particularly from Brennan's relentless rhetorical questions every time she had a moment to herself: "What happened to those girls? Who was the female skeleton? Where was Harry?" on and on. The supposed smart reader already knows that these are questions and is asking them on their own; there's no need for Brennan to reiterate them. The reader knows they'll be answered by the end of the book. Stop filling pages with them! These questions suggest the reader is not intelligent -- well, which type of reader is the publisher expecting?!

The expected intelligence of the reader is inconsistent, but so in Dr. Brennan's intelligence. She's supposed to be this amazing bone specialist and is often quite brilliant at her job. Often she makes excellent connections between clues, of the type you expect the heroine in a murder-mystery to make. Yet other times she is really dense and silly. It takes way too long to notice Basterage's slip-up, for example. It's hard to like a character that maddens you sometimes.

Ryan is a fairly flat character here -- yes, there is something going on under his surface, but it's never given much voice and he does not seem to have much more of a role in this book than 'cop'. Harry is more useful to Brennan's investigation than Ryan.

I read another review about this book on Goodreads, and that person (I forget who) said the tv version of Brennan -- Bones -- is a better character. I agree 100%. Ryan is better, too.