Reliquary by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

The sewers and subway lines beneath Manhattan have played host to many different life forms over the course of entertainment history, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to name one, a river of hatred fueled slime to name another, but never before have I realized just how easily something like this could truly go undiscovered until I started reading the book Reliquary and learned just how big and deep the system is down there, and how it is considered by many to be one of the most unexplored regions in the world -- seriously. Many scientist are starting to say that venturing into the deep abandoned sewer tunnels and subway lines beneath Manhattan, some of which extend 30 stories beneath the ground, is similar to stepping foot upon the soils of a recently discovered continent, one where the inhabitants had been free to live with very little outside influence for years, many of whom band together and formed their own little societies with their own laws and hierarchies. There is even evidence showing that some have lived under the streets for so long that their bodies have adapted to the environment making their eyes able to see in the dark, and their lungs able to live in the less than pure air. Some of these societies even have self built school systems where mothers send their children to be educated, children who the government would have taken away and sent to foster homes if the mothers had remained above ground rather than fleeing to the sewers. So, with so many known oddities happening down there, one has to wonder what else could be occurring. What else could be thriving beneath the surface, beneath the known societies of the homeless? The answer is only as limited as ones imagination. There is no telling what could be going on down there.

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, two authors known for their horrific thrillers, mapped out a possibility, one that takes a look at what could happen if creatures who have been feeding on the homeless beneath the streets for many months start to venture further up and feed on prominent members of society, something that would get noticed by the higher-ups, ones who have the power to demand action be taken. It all starts with the discovery of two headless rotting corpses in a body of water where the sewers sometimes empty out during heavy rains just off of Manhattan in an area known as Humboldt Kill, a place so foul and bacteria ridden that the divers can’t even see what they are doing once beneath the surface and must wear complete body coverings just to prevent infections. The goal of the day was to find a bundle of heroin that was dumped by a suspect in a police operation, but instead a diver discovers the bodies, one of which is later identified as a girl who went missing many months earlier who just happens to be the daughter of a wealthy politically powerful woman, one who brings a lot of attention to the discovery and demands action. The other body is later identified as a scientist, one that was involved in the events of the novel Relic, which this book is a loose sequel to. Eventually more connections are made between the corpses and the events that occurred in Relic and everyone realizes that their conclusions about the events of that horrible night in the museum might have been inaccurate and the problem much bigger than previously thought.

As stated above this book is a sequel to Relic, a wonderful novel that was made into a less than wonderful movie, one which featured a bizarre beast from the Amazon killing people in a museum, therefore I recommend reading Relic before Reliquary. However, if you don’t have the time for an extra book this year, or if this review is just so great that you can’t imagine yourself going another hour without jumping into Reliquary, then by all means head over to your nearest bookstore and pick up a copy because one doesn’t necessarily have to have read Relic to enjoy Reliquary. Just be aware that many of the events from the book Relic are relevant to the story, and while the characters do a fabulous job of recapping, nothing beats living it with them as it happens, your eyes quickly going from sentence to sentence, your mind desperate to know what happens as the beast in the museum gets closer and closer to the group of trapped party goers.