I was hooked on the TV show ever since the FBI guy said to Brennan, " you be Skully to my Mulder ". So when I started reading this book I was of course shocked to find that the universe of the books is nothing like the TV universe. I won't explain all the differences here, they are well known to the readers. This story is not very interesting. The writing starts out really good, and then deteriorates. By the end I just wanted it to be over.

very different from the TV series...
enjoying books very much, but cannot
compare novels' characters to those
portrayed in show--(apples to oranges)
the entertainment value of the TV
series is greater, but writing of
books is well done, worth reading.

well worth a read. started and could not put it down till it was finished

this was a shocker because I watch the show bones and had never read a book by Kathy. It was a great book but dont expect the characters to be anything like the show. good smooth read.

I would recommend this book withsome reservations. I have read several of Kathy Reichs' books and this is not the best one of her writtings. It is very informative with regard to the history of New Brunswick(sp)and the Acadian people.Temperence Brennan obsessed about her childhood friend a little too much. It was not one of her better books in my opinion.

CCL

I beleive I have read every "Bones" book Kathy has written. They are always good. Way better than the TV show by far!

Forensic anthropologist Temperance (Tempe) Brennon works both in Quebec and North Carolina working murder cases which usually involve action, danger and old bones. In this one she's just returned to her Montreal office for the summer and gets a new case, well a new box of bones. Her job, determine if they're animal or human and if human was foul play involved.

She determines they are human and that they appear to be of an adolescent. When she finds out the bones had been discovered in the Canadian Maritime Provinces that brings back memories of her childhood friend Evangeline Landry and her sister, who she played with in South Carolina when they were staying there with their aunt and uncle. Tempe and the girls were close right up until the time the girls disappeared. Her family wouldn't say why, just that it was a bad thing.

Tempe is convinced the bones are tied to a crime. So she goes to the Maritimes in search of missing girls and to try and find out how the girl whose bones she in charge of died. Of course, on again, off again lover Detective Andrew Ryan, who's worked several cases involving missing girls, goes with her.

And as usual Tempe finds out enough to get a killer or killers interested in what she's up to. Here, we're talking about a sociopathic killer of the first order. There's more to be sure, Tempe's in danger again and once again Kathy Reich has written an edge of your seat story that's nigh well impossible to put down. And as usual Ms. Reich's ties everything up neatly, though I didn't think it was possible.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

Others may enjoy a read that is bogged down with technical forensic details and French phrases, but not me. The subject matter is also a bit disturbing as it deals with child abuse/murder. I'll be glad when I finish this one.

Don't bother, unless you want a graphic, scientific, text book description of body parts in varying stages of decay. The details and explainations throughout this book were laborious and unnecessary. I found myself skimming over pages just to get to the end. I did not enjoy this read.

"Bones to Ashes" by Kathy Reichs was an interesting mystery to read. Ms. Reichs is the author who inspired the TV drama on FOX television called "Bones". I enjoy the show, so I was excited to read one of her books!


The book is about Temperance Brennan, "Tempe", who is a forensic anthropologist. Tempe is a busy woman, helping her ex-lover `Ryan' with a rash of teen abductions and deaths/murders, helping her pal `Hippo' with identifying a skeleton found where Tempe spent time as a young girl, and working all the other cases that come in as well.


Tempe is concerned that the skeleton is that of her best friend from 5 of her childhood summers spent at Pawleys Island. She just disappeared one summer day and though Tempe and her younger sister Harry tried to find her, it was no use. Some letters came back undelivered, others did not. This was 40 years ago. Who's skeleton was this? Tempe had to know.


The book also allows us into Tempe's personal life. Her ex-husband, her ex-lover, her sister who's had so many husbands she's lost track. Interesting story, just her personal life!


I enjoyed reading "Bones to Ashes". There are a few things I didn't like, however. There is so much French in it that at times it distracted me from what I was reading. There were also some long stretches between the offerings of more information that was interesting to me.


Overall, I recommend this book. It is an interesting story with some twists in plot that are not expected.


- 1smileycat :-)

I love dramatic thrillers that revolve around forensic science and detective work so Bones To Ashes was right up my alley. It has main character Tempe (Temperance Brennan), who works in forensic anthropology studying bones. She comes home to her Canadian office and gets a box of bones which she is to study and give her professional opinion on if the bones are human or animal and how they were killed, which she had dealt with plenty of times so it should be simple for her. But with this case, for some reason, it returns constant memories of her childhood, which involved a close friend named Evageline Landry.

Evageline held a special place in her heart because they bonded as girls, doing things she had never experienced before. So with the sudden constant memories she attempts to get a hold of her old friend only to get awkward vibes from her family and them stating something bad happened to her, but not giving her any details of what it was. So naturally she is bothered by the whole situation and constantly keeps thinking about Evageline and what really had happened to her.

Plus she is left in the situation to convince police that these bones were tied into some kind of crime and she has to work with Andrew Ryan, a detective, who Tempe has had romantic ties to in the past. Ryan is an an expert in missing juvenile girls' cases. Tempe ends up discovering more than she could have ever thought - a sociopathic killer involved with a child pornography ring. All these elements mixed together makes Bones To Ashes an excellent chilling thriller.

The only thing that kept "Bones to Ashes" from being a perfect 10 on my 10-point scale was the incredible (as in unbelievable) number of coincidences that had to occur for the final plot resolution to be realized. To be fair, the outcome is clearly foreshadowed near the beginning of this superbly written and tightly plotted story. Still, I kept hoping there would be an unexpected twist that would cause the predictable outcome not to happen. Alas.

Beyond that single flaw, this is Reichs' best work to date. Particularly intriguing is a very clever technique called forensic linguistics, a fascinating field of science with which I was completely unfamiliar until I read this book. I've since done some research and Reichs' portrayal of the science and its proper use in this book is impeccably accurate. The ability to confirm from two different pieces of writing the likelihood of a single author was quite satisfying.

Heroine Temperance Brennan continues to battle her demons, her loves, her personal alienation and her uncertainties, which make her a richer character than many of her fictional counterparts in other novelists' works.

The story unfolds a bit slowly for my taste, but it does take on the pace and flavor of the region in which it is set. Like so many novels set in the American South, it moves along at the pace of life. I often found myself wanting to peer a few pages ahead to see when this current long (but somewhat interesting) diversion would end so we could get back to the storyline.

All in all, a really solid and enjoyable work. Highly recommended.

Bones to Ashes is the tenth novel in the Temperance Brennan series but it is my first experience with the character and its creator, Kathy Reichs. As usual, when I jump into a series for the first time somewhere after its midpoint I have to wonder if my reading experience would have been different, maybe even a better one, if I had started the series at the beginning. At the least, I would have a better feel for whether or not the series is holding up nicely or is on the decline, something I still wonder about after having finished Bones to Ashes.

For those as uninitiated in the Reichs books as I was, Tempe Brennan is an American forensic anthropologist who splits her working days between North Carolina and Montreal, where she works for the province of Quebec to identify bodies, bones, causes of death, and those responsible for the murders she helps investigate. Along the way she has had a romance with Canadian Detective Andrew Ryan although, by this tenth book, that relationship has largely been replaced by the professional one they need to maintain as they continue to work cases together. Tempe also has an eccentric sister, Harry, whom she loves dearly but prefers to take in small doses (I agree with her).

Not long after receiving a skeleton from New Brunswick, Tempe manages to convince herself that the bones may very well belong to a childhood friend of hers, Evangeline Landry, a young girl who, with no explanation, was suddenly whisked back to Canada and out of Tempe's life when the two were teenagers. At the same time that she is trying to unlock the skeleton's secrets, Tempe is working with Ryan and others to identify the killers of several young women who have been abducted over a period of years.

Tempe's desire to learn what happened to her long lost friend turns her investigation into something personal and, when she and Harry decide to visit Evangeline's sister, they attract enough attention to place their own lives in danger.

For American readers, the fact that Bones to Ashes is set in Canada is both strength and weakness. On the one hand, Reichs portrays life in a part of Canada that few readers will have been much exposed to beforehand and her Acadian settings, characters and atmosphere are intriguing. On the other, the multitude of dead bodies and missing girls all have unusual French names, making it difficult to keep their individual stories clear from chapter to chapter. This inherent confusion makes it difficult for the reader to get emotionally involved in what has happened to any of these young women and they become almost indistinguishable from one another in the reader's mind, something not helped by the sparse prose that Reichs often uses.

But Reichs does something that many series writers do not do for their main characters; she takes time to delve into their past histories so that new readers have at least a basic understanding of the characters and how they got to be the people they are. And, of course, the forensic science on display is probably the book's strong suit since Kathy Reichs is herself a one of the better known forensic anthropologists in the world.

Bones to Ashes is an interesting book, especially for those drawn to the series because of the science that it features, but it is not an especially strong novel, suffering from a poor juggling of its multiple plotlines and its failure to make the crime victims into real and sympathetic characters. I am not sure that I want to read book eleven in the series, but I am curious enough now to go back and read the first one because I suspect it is better than Bone to Ashes.

I'm amazed how she can weave the plot in her books. Her details of forensics is fascinating.

Although I watch the 'Bones' TV series, I was unfamiliar with Kathy Reichs' books until reading 'Bones to Ashes'. Just going by the book jacket description, I was intrigued at how the original character differs from her TV counterpart. If only the TV writers had gone with this more complex 'Tempe' instead of the one-note geek 'Bones'.
I found this story fairly easy to get into, and felt I had a handle on Tempe, Ryan, Hippo, Harry, etc., within a short time. This is something any halfway decent 'series' author should be able to do for readers who are jumping on in midstream, but not everyone can do it as seamlessly as Reichs did here. The diversity of settings hinted at here-Chicago-born, Carolina-raised, and now working in Montreal-make for some fascinating possibilities. Reichs certainly made good use of both Quebec and Acadian settings here, and put the cultural history into perspective without bogging down the story. Some of the 'textbook science' segments, however, did read a bit too much as though Reichs was copying from a textbook. This is an increasingly common technique used by crime/police procedural novelists, trying to cram every last shred of research or background info into a story, regardless of how awkwardly it might fit. The emphasis on linguistics at the story's conclusion at least led to a breakthrough in the case, yet it still read as if Reichs was 'showing off' for the audience. At times, the scientific jargon from those 'experts' Tempe consulted came off like the long-winded side-effects disclaimers spoken by fake doctors on those TV ads for prescription drugs.

As for the rest of the characters, as I wasn't familiar with the Tempe-Ryan romance prior to this, I can't comment on what this means for their relationship. It didn't spoil anything for me,anyway. I think some of the reviewers who are dumping on this book, and vowing never to read Reichs again, might want to lighten up. If 'Will they or won't they?' is the only reason they're reading this series, then let them move on to romance novels.
Regarding Harry...I thought she was OK at first, despite the too-cute name, but she really didn't add much to the story. I kind of like her as a long-distance background character, but if she's going to take an active part in the story, she needs a better plan!
Overall, an exciting story, with a few pacing problems(too many 'recaps' of stuff that hadn't been mentioned in several chapters,indicating that, with so many cases to investiate at once, perhaps Reichs had too much on her plate). I'd definitely read more of this series, more for the character development than for the painstakingly accurate descriptions of forensic science.

Oh, do I ever adore Reichs's novels. Her novels show proof that there are no limits to one's imagination - especially when the author knows what she/he is talking about.

Reichs sucks you in with the first sentence and doesn't let go until the very last word. The mystery and forensic descriptions keep you just as glued to the pages as the characters do. Again, Tempe lands herself in trouble when she does something someone asked her not to do. But she can't let go of the possibility that the remains could be those of a friend that disappeared.

Twists and turns and a surprising ending make the entire book worth every single one of its 406 pages. A new twist with her ex-husband Pete could have come at a better time, and a twist with Ryan has you feeling heartbroken for Tempe - I cried right along with her, felt her heartache deeply. But her sister comes to somewhat of a rescue, even if she, yet again, manages to freak Tempe out with yet another disappearing act. Absolutely perfect - except for something unresolved between her and Ryan. I refuse to get into more detail than that - I don't like writing reviews with spoilers. Suffice it to say that her MMP of her next novel, Devil Bones, can't come fast enough!

If you're a forensics/csi nut as much as I am, then this series is an absolute must read! I can't get enough! LOL, but thanks to Reichs, I can fill in the time watching Bones!