Tory Brennan always wants to prove herself to her great-aunt and forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan – who also happens to be Tory’s inspiration.
Luckily Tory seems to be having a lot of opportunities to prove herself to her Aunt as loads of people seem to be committing crimes lately; stealing robots at comic–con, stealing gear from LIRI, trying to destroy a wedding. But can Tory and the pack follow the clues and solve the mystery before Tory’s Aunt does, without getting caught?
I’d read a few of Kathy and Brendan Reichs’ e–books/ short stories but I hadn’t read them all before getting Trace Evidence and I thought it was a really good idea to put them all into one book. I was really excited when I got the book and I read it in about a day because it was so great! It was so lovely to be reading about Tory and her friends again after finishing Terminal, which was amazing!
I really liked the short stories, which on the one hand made it more compelling and on the other made it less so. It made it more compelling because all the clues were happening really fast and it was really fun to try and solve the clues with Tory and it made it less compelling because there isn’t as much going on and there is definitely a lot less risk with the short stories than there is with the novels.
It was really great to get to know Temperance Brennan in the short stories because you hear Tory talk about her inspiration so much and it was nice to see her show–off to her Aunt to try to impress her. I think that seeing Tory and Temperance work together was also really good and it made it that little bit more interesting.
In Shift (one of the short stories in the book) Kathy and Brendan write from Temperance, Shelton, Hi, Ben, Kit and Tory’s perspective rather than just writing from Tory’s perspective. It was really insightful and interesting to be reading from all of their perspectives and I was really surprised when I started reading the novel from Shelton’s perspective first. I think it was a really impressive and brave thing for Kathy and Brendan to do and it worked really well! It was really great to know all of the characters that little bit more, especially getting into the heads of the rest of the pack.
I also think that because the stories were so short it gave you more opportunity to get to know the character’s personality, because it was less about the crime and danger they were in and more about just some kids who are trying to help with something they’re excited about. So you get to learn some more about their personalities that you didn’t get to learn in the full novels.
Overall, I think that Trace Evidence is really good; all of the mysteries are really interesting, unique and clever and I enjoyed reading and solving the clues/mysteries with the pack. I definitely feel like the short stories are more interactive of sorts and if you like the Viral Series you should definitely get Trace Evidence!
- Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop
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