Spider Bones

There was so much going on in this book it gave me a headache. So many names, so many bodies and it was truly just too much of a stretch that everything was related.

You can't just skim over stuff in the book, otherwise you'll find yourself completely lost. There's so much information and so much of it technical that I swear I'm at least 10 IQ points higher than I was when I started. While I like learning the ins and outs of forensic anthropology this one started to lose me after a bit.

I did like the human interest part of it. Lily & Katy were a breath of fresh air, but Tempe's hesitation with Ryan and Charlie is starting to get kind of old. There was a Patricia Cornwell moment that I hope never happens again. At a climactic part of the book Tempe runs out to help and I have to wonder, what does an intelligent woman think she's going to accomplish out there? She's unarmed, untrained and unnecessary. All she would do is become a distraction and a liability. It was a bizarre way to keep eyes on the action since the story is told from her point of view I suppose, but it read as ‘Tempe is an idiot' to me.

Definitely not one of the best of the series. The science plot twist was a bit of a surprise, but the “who is this guy?” was telegraphed (for me, at least) pretty early on. I'm fairly tired of the on again, off again love thing with Ryan, but the depiction of Brennan's relationship with her young adult daughter is very accurate to this mother of a 20-year-old. Bringing in the “gangsta” angle seemed ridiculous to me, but I suppose there had to be some immediate danger somewhere to keep the publisher interested.

I still enjoy the television show Bones far more than the novels, which is unusual - but the show has more humor. I don't think I'd read novelizations based on the show, however, because a lot of the humor requires the chemistry between the actors as well as good scriptwriting. There are few authors who can translate that from screen to text.