Bone Chase

Starred review from October 1, 2020
In his new novel (following Burning Sky, 2018), Ochse jumps right into the story of laid-off math teacher Ethan McCloud, who opens a video-recorded message from his recently deceased father and is plunged into a mystery involving a six-fingered man, giants, and a global conspiracy that reaches back into ancient history. Readers will hope the pace will slow down enough to let them figure out what the heck is going on here. Well, the pace does eventually slow down?though not a lot?and we do eventually get oriented. This is an outstanding novel, expertly written and incredibly bold, both in its scope and in what it asks readers to accept. (Again, those giants.) Ochse, whose debut, 2005's Scarecrow Gods, won the Bram Stoker Award for best first novel, has a real flair for both dialogue and action sequences. And, it should be noted, for imparting absolutely vital information during an action sequence, which is no easy thing, a task at which many writers often fail utterly. Recommend this one to fans of fantasy and historical-conspiracy thrillers, but tell them to find a comfy chair, because they're not going to want to stop reading until they've run out of pages.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

November 15, 2020
A thriller that dips into ancient myths, folklore, and the Old Testament to tell about a race to find giants. Ethan McCloud is a laid-off math teacher from Nebraska whose dad asks if he's seen a six-fingered man. Dad is then killed either by an aneurism or by the Six-Fingered Man, and either way, "Burying a father sucks." Father leaves behind a video urging his son to search for giants because "you think critically and base your answers on provable facts." Ethan tells his girlfriend, Shanny, that he has "information about how no shit real giants exist." Indeed, he's shown a picture of a skeleton, "a living, breathing, human-shaped thing, seventy-five feet tall." But searching is a dangerous business. People die after discovering giant bones because "They just knew too much." There are many biblical references to giants which Ethan considers to be evidence. He muses, what if we descended from giants instead of from apes? "This isn't just a race to find giants," Shanny declares. "It's a race to find God." The story moves along reasonably well, with the usual threats, like the girlfriend being in mortal danger. But the pacing hits a speed bump when Ethan brings up an abstruse mathematical concept called the Hodge Conjecture in painful detail and fails to show its relevance. And while the writing and storytelling are entertaining, the author's metaphors just work too hard. "The distance to the trailer was a rheostat of fear." A man's "mouth slammed into a frown." "Butterflies scythed through Ethan." And "his mind filled with ants who were busy rebuilding the possible futures." The best exchange, though: "I thought you were dead." "I got better." Fans of Indiana Jones movies and Dan Brown novels will enjoy this one.

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