The Relic

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed reading “The Relic.” I found it entertaining and fast paced, even when the characters started using scientific language I didn’t totally understand. I’ve never seen the movie, but I was told it was pretty good and that the book was better. Famous words of just about every book turned movie.

This book was a good step away from what I’m used to reading for classes, and because it was entertaining and mysterious, I really allowed myself to just sit back and enjoy it rather than being critical of it. The writing is simple, and the descriptions made it easy to visualize what things looked like (except Mbwun.) I’ve only been to one natural history museum, and it was the Field Museum in Chicago, so I had some background as to what a museum like the one in the book would look like. The National Museum of Natural History in New York is, I’m assuming, the actual museum this was based on, but I watched the trailer for the movie and the one for the movie takes place in the Field Museum in Chicago. I’ll admit, the biggest thing that happened to me while reading the book was that I really want to go to more Natural History museums. Just…not because a museum beast is killing everyone.

I didn’t dislike any of the main cast/PoVs. I think this was another reason the story moved so quick. Often times, when books switch PoVs like this one did, I end up skipping the parts which take place around characters I dislike. I would say, of all the characters, Margo felt the plainest, but I still had no reason to dislike her. She is a doer and that’s what I cared about most. I get worried about female characters sometimes being outshone by their male counterparts, and I was very happy that she got to be a part of Mbwun’s defeat. The other female character felt like she did a 180 from how she was throughout the beginning. Rickman went from being the overconfident, snooty big mouth to the scared little girl. I feel like, as the audience, we didn’t see enough of her and her change to have had her presented like she was in the ending after they get trapped in the exhibit. I get the psychology behind panic and such, but it just didn’t feel natural.

This doesn’t just go for Rickman, who is just one example of one of the characters doing an unpredictable switch, many of the characters felt this way. Switchback, probably my favorite character because of how arrogant and annoying he is, felt pretty forced in the ending. I don’t think how he acted was at all realistic in the opposite sense of how Rickman’s switch seemed overdone with panic. However! I liked all the stuff he did, from eating falling food from the spread to his lack of fear of dying and obsession with making big money. He was very one dimensional, but it didn’t bother me. He worked well as the comedic relief.

The only major criticism I have about the book as a whole is the reveal of the defeat of the monster. The entire second half of the book leads up to it and the cut off to another character before the final blow didn’t work for me. I think it would have been better to describe, in detail, how it died in real time rather than as a story the characters relay. The way Pendergast and Margo came waltzing in made me think, at first, that they had pledged their allegiance to Mbwun in order to survive…which would have been a really fun twist, I think. I see that Pendergast has his own series so it wouldn’t work in that sense.

The best simile I can come up for how this book read for me is it was like watching someone bake a cake for me, frost it, decorate it, cut the slice, put it on the plate, and then tell me how it tasted. BUT THEN someone comes along, someone who altered the recipe somewhere along the line, and tells you it wasn’t a cake, it was a cookie that looked like a cake.

And one last comment I’ve mentioned already in the Roachmeos and Julie-8 legs discord is I hate the word “gingerly” and it is used too many times in the story!