Le grenier des enfers

I wanted something pulpy and easy - a book that tells its story in a straightforward fashion and draws the reader on with an interesting plot. To some extent, this satisfied that need. But I found it a little ham-fisted. Characters are generally either all-good or all-bad, and the obnoxious ones we're meant to hate are introduced through physical descriptions that loudly, emphatically shout, “YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO HATE THIS CHARACTER!”

Meanwhile, the plot developments to come are pretty obvious, especially if you keep in mind the law of conservation of characters. Still, it's not terrible - you get to feel smart for picking up the clues, and there are enough unanswered questions that I wanted to keep reading.

But the denouement is just plain silly, and really took me out of the story. From the bizarre plan of the heroes (which is far less believable than bloodthirsty monsters terrorizing NYC) to the explanation of how everything got started, nothing makes sense.

Add in the fact that the authors completely misunderstand what evolution is, and make other dumb science mistakes like confusing scurvy and rickets, and I just can't say I “liked” this. I didn't hate it, but surely there's better easy-reading fun out there!

This sequel takes place 18 months after the event that took place in the first of the series [bc:Relic 67035 Relic (Pendergast, #1) Douglas Preston https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389576748s/67035.jpg 23046]. The same charaters are all there: Pendagast, d'Agosta, Margo Green and Bill Smithback.Two skeletons are found without their heads attached in Manhattan. d'Agosta is on the case and bring Margo Green help with the investigation. Since its a Pendagast series, he does show up but later on during the book.This book is a great follow up to the first one. In my opinion, you cannot read this one without starting at the beginning. All the characters were great but I felt that in this one Bill Smithback was lacking something, he was better written in the first and his story for this book was not that great. My negative point: there was too many new characters that didnt belong in the book, and it felt like they were added just to fill the story when it wasn`t necessary.The suspense was good, the twist near the end I didn't see that coming which is a good thing!A solid 4 stars for this one!