Day: February 12, 2010

Reliquary by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Tor, 1997

MY GRADE: A-

Reliquary is the sequel to Relic, a book I read last summer and thoroughly enjoyed.  I loved the fact that the novel was set in a museum and featured a grad student as one of the protagonists.  And of course the idea of a monster running around the museum appealed to the fantasy enthusiast inside of me  (though it must be pointed out that it proved to be a sci-fi monster rather than a fantasy monster).  Given how much I enjoyed Relic, I knew I’d buy the sequel at some point.

Reliquary reunites most of the characters from the original, including Margo Green (who’s now a curator at the museum), her former mentor Dr. Frock, Lt. D’Agosta, FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast, and journalist Bill Smithback.

When two headless skeletons are discovered off the Manhattan shoreline, it looks as if the Mbwun (the monster from Relic might be on the loose again).  A series of strange murders ensues, but forensic evidence suggests that the Mbwun isn’t to blame.  Eventually the protagonists are forced to delve deep beneath the city into the hidden world of the ‘Mole People’ who inhabit the warren of subterranean tunnels to battle the hidden evil lurking below.

In many ways, Preston and Child did a great job of duplicating the recipe that made Relic so enjoyable.  Once again, there is a fast-paced plot advanced through the liberal use of cliffhangers.  And the sci-fi element is intriguing, if a bit far-fetched.

But at the same time, like many sequels, this one wasn’t quite as good as its predecessor.  The antagonist’s motivation struck me as a bit illogical and he ended up being defeated rather easily (though stopping the plan he’d put in motion proves to be much more difficult).  I also found Bill Smithback’s subplot to be unnecessary.  It felt like he’d been shoehorned in just to keep him in the story.

The only major complaint I have applies to Relic just as much as Reliquary and it involves Special Agent Pendergast.  From his immaculately tailored suits to his proficiency at nearly everything, he’s just too perfect to be believable.  Don’t get me wrong, I like him, it’s just that he’s basically a Marty Stu.  Preston and Child have written a number of further adventures for him, so I’ll be interested to see if he becomes more believable in later books.

Even though I didn’t enjoy this book as much as its predecessor, I still thought it was a fun read and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a fast-paced techno thriller.

Raven’s Gate by Anthony Horowitz

Scholastic, 2006

MY GRADE: B-

A while back, I stumbled upon the website for the Gatekeepers series by Anthony Horowitz (of which Raven’s Gate is the first book) and, even though the series is written for kids, I thought the basic premise seemed really cool.  So when I got an Amazon.com gift certificate, I decided to throw RG in my shopping cart.

I started reading RG the day it arrived and I managed to finish it in about two days.  It’s only 254 pages and, being a kid’s book, it moves along at a brisk pace.  For the most part, I enjoyed the overall plot and found the characters to be interesting.  Horowitz also manages to add a unique twist to the whole bad-guys-are-trying-to-unleash-some-ancient-evil trope by throwing a nuclear reactor into the mix.

That being said, on closer examination, the plot is riddled with a number of WTF? moments.  For example, Matt (the main character), is a juvenile delinquent sent to live with a strange old woman (Mrs. Deverill) in the country as a part of a government scheme to rehabilitate young offenders.  It’s established early on that Mrs. Deverill is an unpleasant person and something of a taskmaster and Matt comes to regret ending up in her house.  He decides to escape, but is thwarted by a spell that ensures that, no matter which direction he heads, he always ends up back at the same intersection.

This is where we come to the first major WTF? moment.  Matt is forced to return to Mrs. Deverill and the next scene makes it clear that she knows about his escape (she also knows that, just before he left, he rooted around in her stuff).  Yet she does nothing to punish him (or confine him) and, in fact, he’s able to attempt an escape the very next day.  She does send her demon cat to watch Matt and his escape attempt fails, but the fact that she let him attempt another get away struck me as a bit odd, considering it had already been established that Matt was very important to her for some occult reason.

Another WTF? moment comes towards the end of the novel when Matt is forced to take part in a Black Mass in an abandoned nuclear power station.  During the ceremony, Matt hears strange chanting and he’s instantly able to recognize it as a backwards rendition of the Lord’s Prayer.  I’m a practicing Episcopalian who says the Lord’s Prayer every week during the Eucharist and I’m not sure that I’d be able to recognize it if it were said backwards, so I find it a bit hard to believe that a teenager who doesn’t seem to have any particular religious background would be able to recognize it so quickly.

Perhaps these little plot infelicities can be explained by the fact that Horowitz is writing for children and had to make some logical leaps in order to keep the plot moving along at a brisk pace.  At the same time, I’ve read children’s fiction where the author manages to keep the plot moving along without creating the same sort of WTF? moments (the Harry Potter series and the Bartimaeus Trilogy spring to mind).

Horowitz also forgets from time to time that he should be showing, not telling.  Early on in the book, Matt notices a sinister-looking painting at Mrs. Deverill’s house and the narrator  simply tells us that “it must have been painted five hundred years ago,” without any elaboration. It would have been far more effective to say something about the cracked paint or the old-fashioned costume worn by the subject of the painting.

We also get a lot of  superfluous wardrobe information about the characters and, in many cases, it really doesn’t add to the characterization.  I don’t see the point of telling the reader that the main character is wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt.  That doesn’t tell me much about him since most teenagers dress like that.

In the end, I don’t regret buying RG, but I doubt I’ll read any of the other books in the series.  The WTF? moments and the issues with description place it firmly in the higher end of the ‘okay’ category.