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My strategy of explaining this book to people by asking if they remember the 1997 movie "Relic" was perhaps doomed to failure. Especially since Old Bones is actually the beginning of a spin-off series featuring a couple of side characters from Preston & Child's main series, Dr Nora Kelly and Special Agent Corrie Swanson (who apparently didn't know they were both spun off of the same series until Pendergast made a cameo appearance at the end to solve a bonus mystery for them). Maybe someday I will go back and read his books too.

Anyway, Old Bones. I was looking for a fast-reading thriller that wasn't afraid to go high stakes and maybe include a touch of the supernatural or the monstrous. On that I was mostly satisfied, albeit the resolution seemed a little abrupt. Which is a complaint I've had a lot about mysteries, so I wonder if there is something specific I am looking for and not getting. Hopefully not a villain running a deathtrap or an extended climactic battle scene; I'd like to think that isn't my scene. Shall have to think on that more.

One disappointment (I think? still evaluating that as a stylistic choice) is that heroes and villains can largely be identified through their likeability. Am reading the subsequent volumes with this in mind to see how well that holds up as a trend.

But overall, exactly what I wanted from this novel. So, I'm satisfied.

A very quick read. This felt like a bridging volume, transitioning the series from the previous loose trilogy of Cormac solving mysteries in the face of police corruption, to whatever comes next. Which appears to be a supporting cast change and handling internal corruption and misconduct investigations among the garda. Of course, the focus on stopping bad cops serves to reinforce the notion that there are good ones, but you can't really get away from that in this genre.

As with the last few in the series I enjoyed the careful investigative work, but there didn't seem to be much of that before we came to a rapid and convenient conclusion.

This one was slow going. Interesting though. Roughly the first half is a biogeographical history of Europe from dinosaurs on Hateg Island where the European landmass would later be, and the second half is a closer look at the last 400,000 years since hominids arrived in the area. It felt almost like reading two different yet closely related books. Fascinating and very much inspiring me to think about deep (but not too deep) time, especially the tens of thousands of years humans lived in Europe before they started building cities, and how closely in time we missed some of the most recently extinct species. Further back there were many species mentioned for which their closest modern relatives are as far afield as Australia, which surprised me.

If you are European, there is a chance you may feel othered by this book, although Flannery doesn't distance himself much from a European identity. He does however communicate a clear disdain for both Nazis and Romans (who, we hear repeatedly, failed to domesticate even a single animal!)

I was expecting this book to be a history of each of the featured games. Their origins, development of their rules and strategies of play, notable figures, that sort of thing. Instead it was mainly a history of artificial intelligence research devoted to "solving" each game.

Not what I was looking for. Interesting, but not as interesting as it might have been.

I wish I had thought to comment on this when I actually thought to read it.

Delightful, and we did get an answer to the proposal, so not strung along too long on that question. Not quite as much of the other characters as I had been hoping for. I thought Emily Wilde was going to learn a lesson about accepting help from others and not trying to do it all herself, but that hasn't happened yet. I was close on the resolution of the big mystery of the novel, but not close enough.

Looking forward to reading the third volume next month (September). Having a segment narrated by Wendell seems to be a once-per-book thing, so we will see if that continues in book 3, and how many of the secondary cast are returning, and to what extent. I expected the third book to be the conclusion, but it seems there is at least another planned. Hopefully Fawcett won't be breaking them up for drama. The series has been mercifully free from the water of that well so far.

Felt like I was learning a lot about the various ecologies of Earth, and it was startlingly refreshing to read a book that scarcely mentions a single human name throughout. There were one or two—for example Darwin—but few and far between.

I don't know how much I will retain long term, but it is inspiring while it lasts. I had a copy of The Trials of Life as a child; there is one more book in Attenborough's trilogy that Life on Earth belongs to, but I don't know if I have read that one yet.

I guess this completes a loose trilogy and wraps up the overarching mystery of why the station is such a hostile environment to Our Hero Cormac Reilly.

Can't say I'm a fan of the narrative doing a complete exoneration of our other viewpoint character having shot and killed a guy on essentially a gut feeling in the first few chapters. But isn't that what we expect from cop novels?

In audio, since I couldn't find a print copy easily.

I feel like these books are going steadily downhill from the first volume. Less and less of the careful interviewing and checking of records that I enjoyed, and more dramatic turns and twists. Still, I'm not far into this one yet. Maybe it will surprise me.