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Relic
- Pendergast, Book 1
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
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Publisher's summary
Relic, a Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child thriller that introduces FBI Special Agent Pendergast
Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human....
But the museum's directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders.
Museum researcher Margo Green must find out who - or what - is doing the killing. But can she do it in time to stop the massacre?
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Jonah Miller is a Reviver, able to temporarily revive the dead so they can say goodbye to their loved ones - or tell the police who killed them. Jonah works in a department of forensics created specifically for Revivers, and he’s the best in the business. For every high-profile corpse pushing daisies, it’s Jonah’s job to find justice for them. But while reviving the victim of a brutal murder, he encounters a terrifying presence. Something is on the other side watching. Waiting.
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Original premise, exciting story
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Alien Hunter
- Flynn Carroll, Book 1
- By: Whitley Strieber
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- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
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A young wife disappears in the night, never to be seen again. There is no evidence of kidnapping - in fact, everything indicates that she left on purpose. Her husband, a brilliant police detective, cannot believe this - but he also can't find her. Flynn Carroll’s lost love becomes his obsession. He begins amassing a file of similar cases nationwide.
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Don't waste time or credit
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By: Whitley Strieber
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Spandau Phoenix
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The Spandau Diary -- what was in it? Why did the secret intelligence agencies of every major power want it? Why was a brave and beautiful woman kidnapped to get it? Why did a chain of deception and violent death lash out across the globe, from survivors of the Nazi past to warriors in this new conflict about to explode? Why did the world's entire history of World War II have to be rewritten as the future hung over a nightmare abyss?
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Excellent and intense
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It was a dark and stormy knight, and nine dark defenders embarked upon a most perilous quest. They're the ultimate defenders of humanity, modern day knights who do dark deeds for all the right reasons. In this all-star collection, nine of today's hottest paranormal authors bring us thrilling, all-new stories of supernatural knights that are brimming with magic mystery and mayhem.
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Bought this for Dresden, loved the rest!
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By: Ilona Andrews, and others
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Cold City
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If you've never read a Repairman Jack novel, this is the place to begin. It's 1990. A twenty-one-year-old named Jack has dropped out of college, leaving his old life behind to build a new one in New York City. Manhattan's rough edges are jagged enough to shred any unwary newcomer, but perhaps not one who is determined to stay off the grid, at any cost, in the busiest metropolis on earth. And to do so, he'll have to take jobs of a less than legal nature.
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Fun, as long you don't think too much
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Blood Oath
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The ultimate secret. The ultimate agent. The President's vampire. Zach Barrows is an ambitious young White House staffer whose career takes an unexpected turn when he's partnered with Nathaniel Cade, a secret agent sworn to protect the President. But Cade is no ordinary civil servant.
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Buy It
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Libriomancer
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Isaac Vainio is a Libriomancer, a member of the secret organization founded five centuries ago by Johannes Gutenberg. Libriomancers are gifted with the ability to magically reach into books and draw forth objects. When Isaac is attacked by vampires that leaked from the pages of books into our world, he barely manages to escape. To his horror he discovers that vampires have been attacking other magic-users as well, and Gutenberg has been kidnapped.
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A reasonable start
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Dead to Me
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- By: Anton Strout
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A new urban fantasy featuring a man working on the right side of the law - with talents that come from left field. Psychometry - the power to touch an object and divine information about its history - has meant a life of petty crime for Simon Canderous, but now he's gone over to the good side. At New York's underfunded and (mostly) secret Department of Extraordinary Affairs, he's learning about red tape, office politics, and the basics of paranormal investigation. But it's not the paperwork that has him breathless.
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Fun - worth the credit
- By BikeVON on 08-03-12
By: Anton Strout
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What listeners say about Relic
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Elisabeth H
- 04-19-23
one of my scary favorites
I have loved this book since I first stumbled on it and the audio version is no different. It’s delightfully scary. Pendergast's accent is different than I'd always imagined when reading but I don't think it detracts in anyway.
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- Emmalynn Stevenson
- 06-08-23
Great
I saw the movie way back when, but just decided to read the book and the book is so much better (even though I enjoyed the movie as well) the nuances of the characters and the creature are so overtly and subtly written it’s fantastic to see it come alive fully in the book.
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- Seattle Grandma
- 10-14-23
Spellbound!
I sort of listened to this series a bit backward and this exciting title filled me on how another happened and adding even more depth to the wonderful players in this title. I literally could not quit listening and ran my ear pods nearly dry a couple times. Thanks you Douglas and Lincoln for yet another wonderful creation.
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- Atlantis
- 02-29-24
Long chapters of science
The premise was OK. Not as good a future Pendergast books would be.
There were long chapters that droned on with science that wasn't necessary to follow the story line.
Again there was not enough Pendergast in this book.
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- Josh
- 06-19-24
act 3 is a mess
so let me start by saying that outside of act 3 this is easily a 4 star book. good characters, good worldbuilding, a cool protagonist and antagonist, and some good mystery. However... Act 3 is some of the most frustrating and sloppy writing I have experienced. the entirety of act 3 is building tension in one scene, then switching perspectives, building tension in the new scene, switching perspectives and repeat. it goes so far as not coming back to the first scene until the tension is resolved, just so it can build up the new threat to said characters. There are even moments where the characters are expo dumping how they got out of the last mess they were in. I was so angry the entire last third of the book. instead of getting resolution, or seeing everything that had been building coming together, I got book teased for a few hours and then hit the epilogue, which once again was actually really well done! I don't know hoe these authors work, and this was a first outing, so maybe the series gets better. but I dont know if I can bring myself to recommend this or anything by these two.
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- Anonymous User
- 05-29-24
perfect build up
I like how almost the characters field of expertise was needed for survival and solving the murder mystery at large
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- Courtney L
- 08-27-24
An old fave
I enjoy this book a lot. I’ve read it many many times over the years! The voice actors performance of this was great!
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- Meredith
- 01-05-09
Nailbiting Thrills and Perfectly Drawn Characters
This is my first experience with Detective Pendergast and I can assure it will not be my last. I have already downloaded the sequel and can't wait to see what happens next. I was dubious of this monster type genre at first, but the museum provides such a titilating backdrop and the characters are so interesting that my preconceptions quickly fell away. You won't regret trying this one!
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49 people found this helpful
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Overall
- J. K. Williams
- 11-01-08
Clever story; terrific narrator
I listened to Relic over a couple of long trips in the car recently. I would describe it as Michael Crichton meets Sherlock Holmes, and the story is engaging.
However, the narrator, David Colacci, turns a good listen into a great listen. He makes the characters come alive. You love Pendergast, root for D'agosta, and want to see Coffee flayed alive. Colacci may be the best Audible narrator I've ever listened to. I was crushed to see the sequel, Reliquary, is narrated by someone else. AUDIBLE, DO US A FAVOR AND BRING BACK COLACCI AS PENDERGAST IN RELIQUARY!
Last, the conclusion to Relic is clever and caught us totally off guard. As soon as the book ended, my wife and I went back to the first chapter to pick up the clues we missed the first time around. An excellent listen.
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- Tracet
- 03-28-17
That poor museum
I feel like I've heard amazing things about this series (though I couldn't tell you where)… But I can't say I'm impressed. Relic is a thriller, a sort-of mystery in which the murderer isn't going to be the butler or anyone else remotely as ordinary but something entirely Other. It's not a genre I ordinarily go in for, but since I've picked up an installment of the series here and there in various formats I thought I'd start at the beginning.
It didn't begin well. It opened with the sort of prologue that usually makes me sigh, this one in a South American jungle with an expedition going sideways and pear-shaped all at once. And then it picked up and dropped down in Manhattan, as bodies began to drop.
One question: How can you get ballistics on blood spatter? Because Preston & Child seemed to think that's a thing.
Some of the science and technology in the book seemed … kind of adorable. Originally published in 1995, you wouldn't think it would be quite as outdated as it was – but it really was. The information gained from the DNA analysis seemed pretty far-fetched. Can you really tell from reading the DNA how long a gestation period is, or whether a species' estrous cycle is suppressed? Or even the average weight of a given creature?
The storytelling was at times very nice. I made a note at one point: "What the hell happened to that guard?" He was placed in apparently imminent danger, and then … not mentioned again for long enough that I honestly started wondering if he'd been forgotten by the authors. And then, "Oh. There he is. Nicely done." But I have to say I was pretty surprised when what I assumed was the climax of the book came eight hours into a twelve-hour book. I don't think it's a spoiler to mention that in the midst of all the action there is substantial damage done to the museum and, of course, to a number of exhibits – and that hurt. Artifacts thousands of years old, smashed to bits for no good reason. That always hurts – more, in some cases, than character deaths do.
There's a fair amount of repetition in the style of writing. There were at least a couple of mentions of how the creature looked just like the little figurine from South America – and then someone who should know better asks "what does it look like?" And if the New York FBI agent had given the same directions to the SWAT team one more time I would have started swearing. The whole plot was a little predictable – although there was at least one death I didn't expect. At one point Pendergast murmured "not yet" to himself over and over as he waited for his shot … which was absolutely moronic given how often everyone stressed the creature's enhanced senses. He might as well have been yelling "Hey! Come kill me over here!"
It was such a shame that the old botanist told our heroes about the Mbwun legend, and then a few minutes later (audiobook time) the long-lost journal told almost the exact same story. There was no new revelation, no surprise, despite the fact that it was a first-hand account from someone who seemed to actually have experience of the terrible bargain the Kathoga tribe made. Nothing. The story of a bargain with the devil in which people have to eat their own children should not be boring, but, told for the second time in the space of a handful of chapters, it was.
I wasn't overwhelmed with excitement about the characters; they skirted the borders of cliché at times, with the irascible cop, the high-handed Fed who swanned through doing what he needed to, the scientists so focused on their jobs that they've forgotten about life, the journalist who … well, ditto, in his way. Margot not quite but almost escaped being a token Girl. I will say I grew to enjoy FBI agent Smithback, with his Southern gentility and complete disregard for anything trying to get in his way.
I wish the journalist in the group hadn't chosen to act like an idiot journalist at a really stupid time. It would have made so much more sense for him to be helpful and useful, and then capitalize on that later for a story. And were the mayor's fine words real, or because he just heard the reporter called out as such? I don't believe that was ever clarified – in this book, at least.
There was a sort of anti-sexism that surprised me, and kept surprising me – both in its usage and in how it affected how I absorbed the book: the redoubtable Miss Rickman is consistently referred to as just "Rickman". And almost every time, right up to the end, I kept thinking they were talking about a male character. Women just aren't often referred to by their last name alone (I think it happens to my brother all the time, but to me only once at one job, because there were two of us with my first name and the other one came first). What particularly made it odd was that Margot Green is consistently referred to as Margot, but Rickman is Rickman.
I know there are plenty of real examples of Evil Bureaucracy putting profit, pride, and publicity before public safety, and so on – but it gets old. They're never my favorite stories. They're not unrealistic – and maybe that's why they're not my favorites. I don't understand why, say, the directors of a museum would insist on proceeding with an exhibition opening when doing so might put thousands at grave risk. Or why an FBI agent in uncharted waters would fail to take heed of every concern, no matter who it came from, when thousands of lives were about to be at grave risk.
I think it would have been a lot of fun to have everything going on below the surface – the beast or whatever cornered and captured in the basements, everything fixed and solved by the heroes of the piece while the nasties celebrate uninterrupted above, and then the good guys showing up disheveled and blood-spattered and exhausted, maybe damaged – and triumphant.
The sound effects in the audiobook were incredibly obnoxious: echoes in the basement, a muffled overlay for someone on the phone or walkie, etc. Please. Don't. It was especially annoying because it was obviously meant to add a touch of realism – but something that could more naturally have added realism and urgency, a simple amping up of intensity in the narrator's voice in speed and timbre, didn't happen. Part of the climax was read as calmly and sedately as the places in which emails and computer readouts are read. The delivery of Smithbeck and his accent was enjoyable, though.
After a while, that extended climax began to feel like The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure or something, with several discrete groups struggling to survive against a force greater than they are, amounting to a disaster. It just kept going, and going, a difficult situation becoming almost impossible, becoming almost unsurvivable. On the whole, it wasn't entirely my cuppa. I think I will keep going with the series, though; there was enough there that gave me hope for later stories that no longer involve the plot points of this one and its immediate sequel. Anyhow, I own 'em – I'll probably get around to 'em.
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2 people found this helpful