Reliquary: Pendergast, Book 2

So this was a fun read. I was very surprised by not only a huge twist but by the fact this book also made me laugh a few times. The laughter I most definitely did not expect at all. Now I cannot say if others will laugh at this or not but sometimes really stupid stuff seems very funny to me and there is a character in here who is very stupid (but he thinks himself to be very important). But this is actually a very serious story. Not only does the fate of the whole world rest on the shoulders of a few people but the fate of New York as well.So the story pretty much continues from Relic. You definitely need to read that first or else you won't understand this. But if you read that no doubt you remember the creature in the museum that was stealing heads and killing people. Well it's the same thing again except its not in the museum. Its the subway and bodies are found in the river. Lots of deaths in here. The massacres continue. The location changes.There are some decent scary scenes in here underground. Tunnels. Miles and miles of tunnels. You definitely get the sense of the place. Endless darkness, dripping water, old abandoned stuff all rusty just waiting to be found again. And its a horrible maze. And something is after you. And the surface is so far away. You may never see the sun again. Its so very vivid. The descriptions truly brings the environment to life. I actually had some doubts if all of the main characters would survive the events underground, especially near the end. It certainly seems hopeless with so many different things against them.Plus a clock is ticking down too. Because there is a deadline. Because the story is just not only about a creature. Its more complicated than that. There is a race to save the world.Of course everything that can go wrong in here goes wrong. I kind of expected that. And I was not disappointed. All of these errors leads to tons of excitement. And danger. The characters are forced to go into the worst spots imagined. And as the story races to its climax there was a huge shock! Ok, I did notice something earlier in the book that I had thought was odd and out of character for one of the characters but I really didn't think too much about it. But then the revelation at the end! The shock!!! So a huge twist! I would say out of the 140+ books I have read since January 1st this is probably the most shocking twist.I believe the story continues in the third book which I definitely look forward to reading.A fun adventure story!

Another well-told story by these two authors. I tried the audio companion as well and it works quite well. Read ten pages, then open the audio version and it jumps to where you were in the written version. Listen for an hour, then open the written version and now it jumps to where you were when you stopped the audio version. Brilliant. The combination will change the number of books I work my way through each month and enable me to "read" books I normally don't have the time or energy to tackle, esp. nonfiction stuff. Anything by these two authors is worth checking out. Professional-level writing on a consistent basis, well structured stories that make sense and yet explore new and surprising territory, both physical and intellectual in nature. The pacing is well done, the tension levels build and release in a logical way, the way you'd expect a good story to move along. The dialogue is really the highlight of this book, very well crafted with a very strong "you are there in the middle of this" feel to it.

Excellent book, great follow-up to The Relic, has some great twists in it. If you liked The Relic, this is highly recommended.

Loved it

Reliquary by Preston & Child

Based on the other reviews I've read, I'm in the minority that likes this book better than Relic. I liked Relic, but the entire origin of the 'museum beast' just seemed weird to me, and that was resolved in Reliquary. The action and suspense now takes place in the city's underground tunnels and there may be more than one of the creatures still alive, because something is killing off the underground homeless and the occasional topside resident. The creature episodes of X-Files were always my favorite and this reminds me of the show.

Members of New York City's Police Scuba Squad discover two headless skeletons, one of which is hideously deformed, in the Humboldt Kill, aka "Cloaca Maxima, named after the great central sewer of ancient Rome" for obvious reasons. NYPD Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta is called in to investigate the who, why, what, where, etc., of the decapitated corpses, and discovers a link between them and a series of murders plaguing the city's underground homeless population. The violent deaths of the anonymous "houseless," the so-called "mole" people, have not been a priority for the powers that be, but when one of the corpses is identified as that of a wealthy socialite, priorities change fast!The inability to discover the identity, or the species (?), of the unusually malformed skeleton, leads Lt. D'Agosta to enlist the aid of his old friend, anthropologist Margo Green, an assistant curator at the New York Museum of Natural History, and her former professor and mentor, the retired scientist Dr. Frock. FBI Special Agent Prendergast hooks up with the Doctor, the Lieutenant, and the professor, and they are later joined by journalist Bill Smithback. After finding some fascinating new evidence, the team attempts to discover if there is a link between the mole people's brutal murders, the two skeletons found in the Kill, and the Museum Beast incident of the previous year. It is important to note that "Reliquary" is the sequel to "Relic," and though this reads well as a stand-alone novel, it has strong ties to the first book in terms of plot, and characters. Green, D'Agosta, Prendergast, Frock and Smithback all worked together on the Museum Beast case. Enough background information is woven into this storyline so that one need not be familiar with "Relic" to enjoy this book.The plot and sub-plots take some twists and turns, but everything leads our diverse team of sleuths and experts downward, deep into the dark maze of abandoned subway tunnels and sewers that lie beneath the streets of New York. One of the aspects of "Reliquary" that most intrigues me, is the factual, rather than the fictional. Much of the information included about the world underneath the streets of Manhattan is fact. "It has been estimated that as many as five thousand homeless people have lived in the vast warren of underground tracks, subway tunnels, ancient aqueducts, coal tunnels, waiting rooms, disused gas mains, etc., which riddle underground Manhattan. Grand Station alone sits above seven stories of tunnels." The Author's Note contains more information on this subject.I don't want to interject spoilers, so suffice it to say that there are some creepy critters hanging out with the regulars below the Big Apple's glittering sidewalks. One of Margo Green's friends and colleagues, a gifted scientist, had been working secretly, on his own, with some of the plant fibers the now dead Museum Monster needed in order to feed. The man came up with much more than he bargained for, and consequently placed not only the population of New York at risk, but the entire ecosystem of our planet...and worse!! Yoiks!This book starts off with a bang, that is to say, quickly with lots of scariness - which is good. However, the pace slows significantly about halfway through. The concept that "less is more" is seemingly unknown to Misters Preston and Child. I have encountered problems with their tendency to over-write before. Repetitiveness may cause boredom in the reader, and frequent exposure can take the scariness out of monsters. I think "Reliquary" is about 50-75 pages too long. The authors build suspense to a fever pitch, the tension peaks, begins to fall-off, and their point is still not made, nor are the mysteries solved. The lack of a taut narrative, really distracts from the horror and suspense. And, I was/am extremely disappointed in the ending. Not credible at all!! Here I have trekked through the smelly sludge of centuries, thirty stories beneath the city surface, seemingly forever, in order to accompany our protagonists, especially Agent Prendergast, who is superb...for this kind of finale??If you enjoy Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, then by all means pick-up a copy of "Reliquary." It has its good moments and is entertaining, especially, when exploring the belly of the beast.JANA

good storie

This book was an absolute blast. It was even better than Relic.I know I'm late to the party but it seems I've found a new genre to love and a new favorite character.I've a feeling I'm gonna enjoy this series for years to come.

Definitivamente voy a leer la serie completa, me encantó

Non riesco a capire come sia stato possibile non ricavare un magnifico film da questo splendido libro, come il suo illustre predecessore...ma d`altra parte già il fatto che non esista una traduzione italiana fa capire molte cose! Il livello di thriller\horror in cui gli autori sono maestri viene qui arricchito da uno sguardo attento e compassionevole su di un mondo, quello delle 5000 (al 1997!) e più persone che vivono REALMENTE nel mondo sotterraneo 30 piani sotto Manhattan, di cui probabilmente nessuno, soprattutto nel resto del mondo, me compreso, è a conoscenza. I personaggi sono gli stessi di Relic, molto ben disegnati ed empatici verso il lettore; il personaggio di Pendergast fa venir voglia di leggere tutti gli altri libri di questa fortunata serie (cosa che farò senz`altro...).Lo consiglio assolutamente, se non leggete questo allora Relic cosa lo avete letto a fare?

The item arrived on time and I have been eagerly devouring the pages of this book!! Pleased with the service from the seller and the condition of the book matched what was expected. Happy Customer!If you wish to read this book, I highly recommend it. If you read or even listened to the audio version of Relic, Book 1 of the series, then you will not be able to ignore this book, you will HAVE to know what happens! And it doesn't disappoint!