#prestonchild

[mydearaloysius]

Just one more… ? Didn’t want to get explicit with the date night theme, but I may in the future????

[bethnalgreen]

The Preston and Child Books

Welcome to my corner of Tumblr, and my first-ever post. Sorry about the length!

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

I can't even remember when I first read "Relic," the first novel in what became the Pendergast series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. It was probably sometime in the 1990s. I do have specific memories of reading "The Cabinet of Curiosities" in the summer of 2002. My sister and I had just moved to New York City, and I was working at Barnes & Noble. You could borrow any hardcover book from B&N to read as long as you put a protective book cover on it. I spent several late nights reading it in our sublet, scared half to death and definitely entertained.

For the next six years, I was a passionate fan of these books. I even managed to snag an audiobook version of "The Book of the Dead" before its official release date (not from B&N) because I was going to be on a plane that day and wanted desperately to read it ASAP.

It's hard to believe that's been almost 15 years ago. I'm still reading the P/C books, and looking forward to them, but I've found myself increasingly disappointed in them.

I don't want to just dump on them. I write for fun but have never finished a story, and I truly applaud the imagination and dedication evident in even the books I truly dislike. (And there have been a few. I give every P/C book a second chance, but it doesn't always make me like it more. The novels I love have been read at least half a dozen times.)

The sticking point for me in the last half-dozen books or so has been the character of Constance Greene (she's so special she can't just be a Green, she has to be a Greene.) She's like a female version of Agent Pendergast, minus the empathy, charm, and any other personality trait that makes him tolerable.

Pendergast can be a pill, that's for sure. But I always manage to root for him, because he does occasionally show signs that he's human. Constance may as well be a robot ... actually, that could explain a lot. Pendergast's outrageous intellectual and physical feats can be explained to some degree by his wealth, his education, his experience in special forces, and his FBI training.

Constance, on the other hand, was picked up off the street at age six by a sociopath. He molded her into exactly what he wanted in a companion. She had more than a century to practice the harpsichord, study languages (Gaelic, really? How convenient), and read hundreds of books on esoteric subjects. She apparently never left the house during that time, which is why her physical feats really beggar belief.

As much as I like "The Book of the Dead," this crap with Constance started then. She'd been a long-term shut-in, but she somehow was able to track Diogenes all around the world, get the better of him in Florence despite his meticulous planning, and outthink him on the slopes of Stromboli.

From there, it's only gotten worse. She's become an "all-knowing ninja," to quote someone on Reddit. She can fire a machine gun after watching (with ill-concealed boredom, no doubt) a man show off the weapon for a few minutes. She can swim, even though she couldn't just a few weeks earlier. She becomes an adept at Chongg Ran after a few lessons (of course she does!).

And what makes it all worse is this gross quasi-romance that's taken up too much time in the series. Constance has convinced herself that she's in love with Pendergast, and she won't take no for an answer. (He's told her "no," with words and body language, more than once.)

If Pendergast has to have a romantic partner, doesn't he deserve better than a short-tempered, monomaniacal sociopath? This woman threatened to kill him in "Blue Labyrinth" for reminding her about her dalliance with Diogenes, then planned her own suicide as he lay dying in the hospital. She saves his life because she's obsessed with him and is dependent on him.

I haven't yet read "The Cabinet of Dr. Leng" -- given how Constance-centric it sounds, I've decided to get it from the library instead of spending my hard-earned money on it -- but I'm hoping the trilogy is a way to gracefully get rid of her. Have her fall for a man back in the 1880s and stay there. Hell, have Diogenes pilot a spaceship from Area 51 back into the 1880s and whisk her off to Mars!

She's taken up enough space in this series. Please, guys, just ditch her already ...

Favorite P/C Novels

Relic, Thunderhead, The Cabinet of Curiosities, Still Life with Crows, The Book of the Dead, Fever Dream, White Fire

Least Favorite P/C Novels

Brimstone, Cemetery Dance, Crimson Shore, Obsidian Chamber, City of Endless Night, Crooked River, Bloodless

[lemondedemanon2019-blog]

Hello les filles 🌹 Aujourd’hui on parle lectures. Je commence aujourd’hui un nouveau livre. Le livre des trépassés de Preston & Child. Partager moi vos lectures du moment aussi ☺️ PS: Venez vous abonner sur mon deuxième compte @travecouple_ Soutenez moi sur Utip ( lien dans ma bio ) Cliquez sur le lien dans ma bio pour pleins de bon plan! 🌹 #livre #livres #lecture #lecturedumoment #lectureencours #lectureaddict #lecturedujour #lectures #roman #romans #prestonchild #prestonandchild #lelivredestrepasses #manonworld2019 #influ #influenceuse #influenceur #influencer #influencer #influencers #influenster https://www.instagram.com/p/Byk0i3Ii-aB/?igshid=p5qlmjjts0l5

[mydearaloysius]

[bethnalgreen]

Dead Mountain preview chapters

So, the new novel in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's Nora Kelly (and Corrie Swanson) series is out in about a week. I ordered my copy from the Poisoned Pen because I want the collectible cards. (Sorry, guys, don't really care that it's an "autographed" first edition.) I used to be a B&N bookseller, so I know people who order from there or Amazon tend to receive the book on the release date, while I'll have to wait a week or two. Fortunately, Amazon has a sample available online that I can obsess over in the meantime.

Spoilers for the new book (and previous books in the series) ahead!

Chapter 1: It's late October. Two frat guys get stuck in the snow in the New Mexico mountains. They proceed to get drunk and stoned, crawl into a cave for shelter, and find human remains.

Chapter 2: She's back! My favorite character, Special Agent Corinne/Corrine Swanson, appears. (Has Hachette fired all their proofreaders? Come on, it's kind of essential that you figure out how the first name of your co-heroine is spelled.)

It appears that Corrie has spent the past few months on boring FBI assignments after the shit-show that wrapped up Diablo Mesa. I find the mention of debriefings and lie detector tests reassuring; I wondered how much she told her superiors about what happened. Apparently, she told them everything. Unfortunately, it looks like she's gotten screwed over again with regards to commendations, promotions, etc. because of the case's classified nature. Typical. (Can't FBI agents get commendations or decorations for classified work? It seems like Pendergast has a few of those in his jacket.)

Her boss now has a case for her, and introduces her to her new mentor, Agent Sharp. (RIP, Hale Morwood.) Corrie notices that his clothes and haircut are better than typical FBI issue. He's pretty quiet, has an accent she can't quite place, and has a reputation for being somewhat of a lone wolf. Hmm, reminds me of someone ...

Anyway, her boss assigns her the human-remains-in-the-mountains case, and Corrie and Sharp leave posthaste.

Just a small rant here. This chapter states Corrie's been at the Albuquerque FO for about a year. Excuse me, it's been ALMOST TWO YEARS. She started her assignment in ABQ in January 20xx. The meat of the story in Old Bones took place in May/June. The events of Scorpion's Tail took place three months later (fall of 20xx). Diablo Mesa took place six months after that (spring of the next year). Dead Mountain explicitly starts four months later, on Halloween. That's nearly two years. Her probationary period should almost be up already. Sometimes I wonder if the authors are deliberately messing with the timeline to keep Corrie in stasis, or whether they just can't be bothered with consistency.

Chapter 3: We begin with another inconsistency. We're told that Morwood was forced into a mentoring role by an "injury," but it was actually his interstitial lung disease.

Corrie learns a little more about the Manzano Mountains region and gets snarky about the "need" for hundreds of nuclear weapons. Sharp seems to appreciate the sarcasm.

We're introduced to a deputy for Torrance County, who reminds Corrie of her "friend," Sheriff Watts of Socorro County. She wonders what Watts is up to. This is interesting ... he asked her out in Diablo Mesa, and she pretty much accepted. It's now four months later, she obviously hasn't been too busy, and they haven't gone on that date yet? In fact, it doesn't even sound like she's really kept in touch with him. Maybe later chapters will clarify this situation and explain how in the world he's surviving with only one of his Colt Peacemakers.

The deputy seems decent enough, but the big kahuna himself, Sheriff Hawley, is yet another of the male LEOs that Corrie runs into all too often. Calls her "young lady" even after she's identified herself as FBI and refuses to leave the scene (which he's stomping all over without protective gear) until the MALE FBI agent threatens him. Sigh.

Side note: I got an email from Poisoned Pen, which refers to an "evil sheriff" in this novel. Does Hawley have something to do with the "Dead Mountain" cold case that Corrie and Nora are going to investigate? On the other hand, one Goodreads review says that the plotline with Nora, Skip, and the sheriff goes nowhere. Is he just evil for evil's sake, then?

Anyway, Corrie goes into the cave and sees the human remains. And there the preview abruptly ends.

I feel like there's a lot of unpack here, and we don't even know what's going on with Nora and her billionaire boyfriend!

As much as I bitch about continuity errors in these books (I guess you never stop being a copy editor) I almost always really enjoy them. I expect I'll devour Dead Mountain as fast as I can, give it a chance to digest, and then read it again for things I missed the first time. And I'll definitely login to watch Preston and Child's appearance at the Poisoned Pen on publication day.

Anyone who reads this, feel free to speculate on what might happen in the book. I have a feeling the next few weeks are going to drag ...

[liena67]

Santi numi! Quanto mi era mancato Pendergast! 😍😍😍 Per certi versi vorrei prenderlo a padellate peggio di quanto ho fatto per il commissario Ricciardi (Aloysius benedettiddio! Fino in Tibet sei andato a riprendertela un paio di libri orsono e ancora cincischi???) Ma non si può che amarlo sempre in assoluto! Ritmo da cardiopalma! Prossimamente recensione completa e seria sul mio blog. Ps: datemi qualche fanfiction su Pendergast e Constance pls! 💙 #bookstagram #instabook #thriller #readingtime #prestonchild #pendergast #aloysiuspendergast #leggere #romanzo #lettura #libri #recensione #CosaHoLetto #consigliaunlibro #consiglidilettura #libridaleggere #libro https://www.instagram.com/p/CREu0iDnzi9/?utm_medium=tumblr

[mydearaloysius]

Phew, that took way longer than it should have! I’ve had a busy week designing infographics for a new garden center. ANYWAY Here’s Vinnie and Pendergast taking a selfie. Vinnie wanted to show off his new suit that P helped him pick out, lol.

[mydearaloysius]

Aw, twu wuv…

[mydearaloysius]

[mydearaloysius]

Let's try this one more time!

First image is last artwork of 2023. Second image is first artwork of 2024!

[mydearaloysius]

Laaadiiiies…

[mydearaloysius]

One of my favorite lines.

[mydearaloysius]

[mydearaloysius]

[mydearaloysius]

[mydearaloysius]

Do you think Pendergast would ever smoke weed? Would you draw that? Alone or maybe with friends?

The answer to your first question is yes, I believe he has at some point. He seems like someone who would want to experiment with mind altering drugs just to have experienced it. Also, in RELIQUARY chapter 23, he reveals to D'Agosta his pharmacopia and even takes biphetamine in order to blend in with the subway people.

Answer to your second question, a resounding yes! Lol