Jul. 9th, 2010 03:56 pm
Skip if you are a fan of Kathy Reichs.
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aphrodite_mineAlmost a year ago I read the first few chapters of a Temperance Brennan book about a plane crash -- the descriptions were delicious and vivid. The characterization was weak but... forgivable in something that was basically a beach read. I had to return it to the library before I got into anything real. But, I never really gave up on wanting to like the books that inspired the show "Bones" -- after all, I like what I've seen of the show, and I liked--mostly--what I'd read of the books.
Well, safe to say I won't be reading any more of them. I just finished "Grave Secrets" -- a Tempe Brennan mystery that falls relatively early in the series (2003) and covers the topics of an old Guatemalan political massacre (the desaparacedos), unruly teen girls, Brennan's wayward heart -- she's drawn to her usual partner Ryan AND a dashing Guatemalan detective named Galiano, stem cell research, and a lot of disgust for bad men who do bad things.
The overall plot isn't bad, even if the case connections (between the massacre and the current missing girls) do seem far-fetched and illogical and aren't even fully explained at the end. What bothers me, still, is the way Reichs, and her editors cater to a socially and educationally illiterate audience.
The book spans between Guatemala and French-speaking Canada, so naturally Brennan encounters people--including herself--who speak both Spanish and French. One might expect to use context clues to decipher some of these words and phrases, or have them translated once, and referred to later without translation. No. Reichs babies her audience, spelling out these phrases each and every time they are uttered. This also happens when Brennan is dealing with any sort of scientific process. This is at least explained away in the text by surrounding her with inepts like policemen and family members of victims, but not a single conversation about stem cells, body decay, history, and on and on goes by without feeling like Reichs--who is an expert herself--has opened a text book and sat her poor, uneducated audience down in front of a video to catch us up while she goes on ahead with the story.
Sure, a little information once in awhile is always helpful. Yeah, I'd like to know that they are in fact performing an autopsy. But to be honest, I don't need to know all of the details. The fact is, I'm not reading a text book. I'm not going to go out and try to duplicate the work, do my own slicing and dicing after reading this joke of a novel. The Brennan books are beach reads, not Science courses.
Brennan works as a character on "Bones" because they have used this trait of "textbooking" and worked it into the character, but as an author, Reichs is completely at odds with Brennan. Brennan seems carefree and flirty most of the time, and at other halves of the book she is quoting long histories of Guatemalan wars.
Another thing that drove me batty, especially towards the end was Brennan's (who was narrating) habit of redundantly asking questions of the reader to remind them of every single plot point in every single chapter. "Would I be the next victim? Of whom? What was xx doing with the body? Where would we find it?" Paragraph after paragraph. Some of the prose in the middle was fine, sometimes even enjoyable. But that pattern? Infuriating.
If I want to know more about stem cells after reading the book, I'm going to do my own research. I don't need a fictional character to do it for me. So thanks, Ms. Reichs, I'm sure you'll make some paperbackswap users very happy when I put your books up for trade.
Well, safe to say I won't be reading any more of them. I just finished "Grave Secrets" -- a Tempe Brennan mystery that falls relatively early in the series (2003) and covers the topics of an old Guatemalan political massacre (the desaparacedos), unruly teen girls, Brennan's wayward heart -- she's drawn to her usual partner Ryan AND a dashing Guatemalan detective named Galiano, stem cell research, and a lot of disgust for bad men who do bad things.
The overall plot isn't bad, even if the case connections (between the massacre and the current missing girls) do seem far-fetched and illogical and aren't even fully explained at the end. What bothers me, still, is the way Reichs, and her editors cater to a socially and educationally illiterate audience.
The book spans between Guatemala and French-speaking Canada, so naturally Brennan encounters people--including herself--who speak both Spanish and French. One might expect to use context clues to decipher some of these words and phrases, or have them translated once, and referred to later without translation. No. Reichs babies her audience, spelling out these phrases each and every time they are uttered. This also happens when Brennan is dealing with any sort of scientific process. This is at least explained away in the text by surrounding her with inepts like policemen and family members of victims, but not a single conversation about stem cells, body decay, history, and on and on goes by without feeling like Reichs--who is an expert herself--has opened a text book and sat her poor, uneducated audience down in front of a video to catch us up while she goes on ahead with the story.
Sure, a little information once in awhile is always helpful. Yeah, I'd like to know that they are in fact performing an autopsy. But to be honest, I don't need to know all of the details. The fact is, I'm not reading a text book. I'm not going to go out and try to duplicate the work, do my own slicing and dicing after reading this joke of a novel. The Brennan books are beach reads, not Science courses.
Brennan works as a character on "Bones" because they have used this trait of "textbooking" and worked it into the character, but as an author, Reichs is completely at odds with Brennan. Brennan seems carefree and flirty most of the time, and at other halves of the book she is quoting long histories of Guatemalan wars.
Another thing that drove me batty, especially towards the end was Brennan's (who was narrating) habit of redundantly asking questions of the reader to remind them of every single plot point in every single chapter. "Would I be the next victim? Of whom? What was xx doing with the body? Where would we find it?" Paragraph after paragraph. Some of the prose in the middle was fine, sometimes even enjoyable. But that pattern? Infuriating.
If I want to know more about stem cells after reading the book, I'm going to do my own research. I don't need a fictional character to do it for me. So thanks, Ms. Reichs, I'm sure you'll make some paperbackswap users very happy when I put your books up for trade.
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I've concluded that Reich's books are mostly her Mary Sue-ing herself [she went by the pen name Temperance Brennan for a while] and the show took what worked about Brennan and nixed what didn't.
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(I do like what I've seen of Bones though, mainly because I'm rather fond of Brennan in that, and her relationship with Booth is quite fun).
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