Relic

Pendergast, Book 1

By: Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child

Narrated by: David Colacci

Length: 13 hrs and 1 min

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?

Prolong the suspense: listen to the sequel, Reliquary.

©1994 by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. (P)1995 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"With its close-up view of museum life and politics, plausible scientific background, sharply drawn characters and a plot line that's blissfully free of gratuitous romance, this well-crafted novel offers first-rate thrills and chills." ( Publishers Weekly)

"Wildly cool....Thrill hounds couldn't ask for a creepier environment....a thriller staged in the world's scariest building, with no room for the squeamish." ( Kirkus Reviews)

addictive

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

This was a great read/listen kept me interested and couldnt wait to get back to it.

What was most disappointing about Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child ’s story?

There was nothing disappointing about the story or of the pacing

Would you be willing to try another one of David Colacci’s performances?

The performance of David Colacci was entransing

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Relic?

I would not make any changes

Good, but with faults

Overall, I thought the book itself was very good. I enjoyed the narration and the premise for the book was great. The only part where it started to get dry was when they were hunting the "monster" in the museum. I think it could have stood to be a bit shorter. Otherwise, I highly enjoyed the book!

The Narrator

David Colacci did a fantastic job made the book come alive. When the story got boring he made it come back to life

Absolutely awesome!

If life would have allowed me to - I would have finished this in 1 day!!

Good story, bad dialogue

I only made it 2/3rds of the way through the book before putting it down. I really enjoyed the story and the descriptive fashion of the objects and environments. But the two-dimensional characters and the dialogue drove me far enough away that I couldn't enjoy it anymore. I really wanted to like this series as it has been hard for me to find a good contemporary sci-fi book about monster-hunters and/or paranormal investigators, which is slightly infuriating as Howard Phillips Lovecraft, August Derleth, and F. Paul Wilson have all made it one of my favorite genres.

Amazing meeting off a really good story with a really great narrator!

While this was probably a great story to begin with, the narration put it completely over the top! This would be a great first listen for folks who do not typically listen to audiobooks! I found myself r paper in my driveway unable to go in to resume normal life on more than one occasion with this book! Anyone who like s scifi works will surely find this to be a great listen!

Awesome thriller. In love with the series.

Love Pendergast. Great from beginning to end. Narration is better on the trilogy (personal opinion )

Great story!

I have read this book many times over the years. Once you start you can’t put it down. I decided to listen to it this time around and it was a wild ride! Love it! Highly recommend!

Relic

The Story dragged on a bit. It was We’ll written and enjoyed listening to the book.

Glad this wasn’t my first of the series

Like many others, I happened to first read some of the later Pendergast books and really liked them. So I wanted to go back and start at the beginning. This is not the best the series offers. However, I know of many great books and tv series that take a bit of time to get going, so I’ll stick with it. This book reminded me a bit of The Poseidon Adventure in structure. Bit of a spoiler: the first part is where we get to know all the characters, then the second part is following various groups trying to escape the ship, or museum as it were. The second part got pretty tedious, especially as it’s all pretty cliché. I actually finally sped up the audio a bit to just finish, and I always have to listen at regular speed.

The narrator would be pretty good if not for the ridiculous, over the top accents he gives people. He’d be going along in his native accent then, bam, one of the worst, fake, stereotypical southern drawls or NYC accent you’ve ever heard and it would rip you out of the story. One character is straight up Thurston Howell III. Another is Groundskeeper Willie from the Simpsons. One character is supposed to be a good guy but he’s given this smarmy, cringy cartoon mobster voice that makes you hate him. You picture him with a hug cigar in his mouth saying “yeah, see, you want I should waste him, see?” Also, the narrator insists on calling D’Agosta “degusta”. The female lead is read with the same overly exaggerated, languid, soft spoken voice as so many men in farcical comedies use when pretending to play women. I’d probably rate this higher with a different narrator. I guess it could be worse.