A review by letmeinthelibrary
Bone Chase by Weston Ochse
2.0
This is full of conspiracy theories so if you can suspend your disbelief and don't care about science or facts then maybe it's fun? But also the way Ethan ends up in like 6 different ppl's clutches is just ridiculous and this story's flow is all over the place.
It feels like Ochse was trying to achieve the kind of thrillery, mind-blowing fun Dan Brown gives you in Da Vinci Code. The difference is that Robert Langdon puzzles out conspiracies surrounding stories about Mary Magdalene in the Bible and Ethan WhateverHisNameIs just says "bone chase" a lot and is supposed to be figuring out if giants exist and there's a huuuuuge coverup by (all?) religion for giants........ because giants would rule the world if ppl knew about them. What's exciting about Da Vinci Code is that while the story may be fictional, all the things being referenced and the locations of clues are all REAL! In Bone Chase, everything reads like a wacky forum post from people who religiously watch the fake alien documentaries on the History channel. I've yet to comb through all of the references in this book to supposed fact, but in terms of believability, this book doesn't cut it, and therefore loses a lot of the excitement for readers.
There are also a lot of ridiculous things in this book like a woman pulling a machine gun out of a baby carriage to shoot at the protagonists and laying a dead ally on a bed in a crappy motel so "at least he'll get a proper burial this way." Not to mention to incredibly badass but still a virgin Shanny--Ethan's ex girlfriend-- who does all of the hands-on adventuring for Ethan so she has to die/be kidnapped for half the story so Ethan can finally get some agency. Shanny was better than I expected from this sort of story, but I rolled my eyes hard at the obligatory "hero has sex with the damsel" scene. It's just so unnecessary.
I also don't necessarily need virtue signaling in my characters, but some of these people were just written as weirdly racist??? The priest who is very young and Asian says "is it my age or my Asian?" which isn't even a joke worth typing in your first draft, and a guy who eventually pulls over to help says he almost kept driving because he thought they were Mexican.
It feels like Ochse was trying to achieve the kind of thrillery, mind-blowing fun Dan Brown gives you in Da Vinci Code. The difference is that Robert Langdon puzzles out conspiracies surrounding stories about Mary Magdalene in the Bible and Ethan WhateverHisNameIs just says "bone chase" a lot and is supposed to be figuring out if giants exist and there's a huuuuuge coverup by (all?) religion for giants........ because giants would rule the world if ppl knew about them. What's exciting about Da Vinci Code is that while the story may be fictional, all the things being referenced and the locations of clues are all REAL! In Bone Chase, everything reads like a wacky forum post from people who religiously watch the fake alien documentaries on the History channel. I've yet to comb through all of the references in this book to supposed fact, but in terms of believability, this book doesn't cut it, and therefore loses a lot of the excitement for readers.
There are also a lot of ridiculous things in this book like a woman pulling a machine gun out of a baby carriage to shoot at the protagonists and laying a dead ally on a bed in a crappy motel so "at least he'll get a proper burial this way." Not to mention to incredibly badass but still a virgin Shanny--Ethan's ex girlfriend-- who does all of the hands-on adventuring for Ethan so she has to die/be kidnapped for half the story so Ethan can finally get some agency. Shanny was better than I expected from this sort of story, but I rolled my eyes hard at the obligatory "hero has sex with the damsel" scene. It's just so unnecessary.
I also don't necessarily need virtue signaling in my characters, but some of these people were just written as weirdly racist??? The priest who is very young and Asian says "is it my age or my Asian?" which isn't even a joke worth typing in your first draft, and a guy who eventually pulls over to help says he almost kept driving because he thought they were Mexican.