Bone Chase by Weston Ochse

Ethan is a jobless High School math teacher who hasn’t exactly been telling his parents about his current employment issues. When his father dies suddenly and leaves him a box with clues to a centuries-old mystery, Ethan feels like he needs to find those answers. Is there an ancient race of giants who are integral at weaving humanity’s path? Ethan will find himself shot at and running all over the states to find the solution.

Billed as a National Treasure/ DaVinci Code-type thriller, the plot doesn’t let up very often… But while you’re going to find a non-stop chase, parts of the story don’t exactly stick together well, and I will get to that in a bit.

One of the first things Ethan does is hook back up with his ex… she’s smart, she cares about him, and she’s an ex-soldier. Everything Ethan will need to keep the Six-Fingered man and the Council of David away. The many legions and allies are out for the duo. And in this sense, I find Dean Koontz’s Jane Hawk series to be a much better fictional world to compare to…

And here comes the balance in my review… But unlike Koontz, Ochse’s transitions between the “real” world and the scifi elements are often rough and necessitate a rather large leap. In the business of deep-state conspiracy writing, it’s hard to keep the illusion up without that (fictional) credible evidence. It mostly comes up in those transitions between dashes from one clue to the next.

While Bone Chase is loaded with those thriller-tensions, the ties that bind the plot don’t always work together.

3 out of 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley, Gallery/ Saga, and the author for an advanced copy for review.