Crypt of Bone, ARKANE Thriller #2

Morgan and Jake have to recover the Devil's Bible before it gets into the wrong hands and can cause devastating consequences that can affect the whole world. Milan reads from the pages and the most hideous thing happens and puts Morgan and Jake in a bad and dangerous position. Overall, the book was another great book in the series. Very intense at times and with unexpected outcomes.

A mixture of myth religion and fantasy with convincing hero’s ~ enjoyable and captivating - kept me enthralled beginning to end

Again, Ms. Penn has written a really exciting story. A few parts rolled heavily toward the "unbelievable" side of the meter, but overall, I enjoyed it. Like the first book, I felt the ending came rather quickly. But I guess I will take a quick ending scene over dragging it out for pages and pages.

With a very interesting (and sometimes creepy) cast of characters, this thriller is simply packed with continuous action and surprises - Morgan and Jake keep things interesting, moving quickly and there is certainly some chemistry developing between the two.

So I haven't given up on the series. Its a quick fun read. The story is rushed and major quick leaps to advance the story. I picture in my mind the stories I read on a tv to film scale. This easily feels like a syfy channel tv show.

I loved the delicate weaving of history, fantasy and contemporary life. JF Penn is my new favourite author! Can’t wait to. read her other books.

As I said on my previous review of Book 1, my Christian faith keeps me a little skeptical of most of the subject matter. However, the writing is fantastic, the research outstanding, the details, threads of plot and character developments are first class. The action is a bit overstated at times for my taste, but I recommend this for anyone who loves action, religious intrigue (this is done very respectfully) and plots that are well thought out and well written. Looking forward to Book 3!

My book review today is on the second book in An ARKANE Thriller, Crypt of Bone by J.F.Penn. This is one of the few books I actually bought, I have so many given to me to read and review, I seldom buy any. I liked the first book so much I had to have the second. The books deal with end of times prophecies and religious artifacts. I really liked the book although it was a little more graphic in some areas than the first book. Morgan Sierra is back home in Oxford and bored with her situation. She has decided she needs the excitement of working for ARKANE. Her job isn't giving her enough challenge but before she can make that happen. She receives a call from a dear friend, Dinah Mizrahi, in Israel. There's something strange going on at the mental health facility, Ezra Institute, where she works. Two suicides have taken place and are linked to the end of times prophecies that Morgan studies. Dinah asked her to come and help her. Upon her arrival, Dinah shows her the rooms where the two people lived. You could still see the faint outline of the pale horse of the end times on the wall of the one who died there. The other patient had a picture of the pale horse as he jump off the Western Wall. The picture of the pale horse is now used by the evil group known as Thanatos. Morgan asks about their medications and therapy. Dinah tells her they are on new meds from Zoebios and an audio therapy. As Morgan examines the headsets, they are attacked and the hospital wing is blown up. Morgan saves her friend but as the ambulance is about to pull out, she see that the man who attacked them is the paramedic. Having no choice she shoots the paramedic and is arrested for murder, she immediately call ARKANE. Landing quickly in England, her former partner, Jake Timber meets her and takes her to headquarters. Where she becomes involved in mission to discover The Devil's Bible before Thanatos can get there hands on it. The search for this book begins an incredible journey for the two of them. Thanatos and Zoebios are connected an out to destroy a quarter of the human population. You are taken to places you never heard of and places I have no desire to go to. It was an intriguing book, with characters that were deeply flawed and in some cases possessed. Not a journey I would want to take. As all good fiction good wins out over evil and just in time to send Morgan off to another religious crisis. An outstanding story line, characters bigger than life, dead bodies, old bones, blood and guts, what's not to like. You may purchase it at Amazon.com. I hope you read it and enjoy it. God bless you all. Crypt of Bone. An ARKANE thriller. (Book 2)

This is my kind of book--erudite, action-packed, mesmerizing, and a thrilling blend of what is and how it can turn deadly. I was very slow in reading this book because it was so thoroughly enjoyable. The author takes the reader on a journey through secrets of religion, jaunts across the globe, believable action, and evil. She approaches the Bible with a tremendous amount of scholarship, yet never leaves the reader feeling as if they've been lectured. She uses her scholarship as servant of storytelling. When the character of Natasha bends down and quotes Ecclesiastes before her act of violence, it is a chilling moment of biblical interpretation, accomplishing what too few writers do--entertain and inform. It was Harry Bailey in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, also quoted in this book, who tells the travelers to make their stories full of "sentence and solas." Penn pulls it off beautifully. While in university, I came across a book (the title now forgotten) about the scholar adventurer. As Morgan Sierra is remembering her father, she smiles when she thinks of his approving of her as a warrior academic. I read that late at night and woke up my husband when I yelled, "Yes!" to both Morgan's reflection and the writing of Joanna Penn. Her scholarship is seamlessly woven into the story, and although I have not yet read the first in this series, she keeps new readers up to speed with skill. Is there anything better than uncovering the secrets behind what we consider the ordinary? Or traveling from one exotic city to the next, always just one step ahead of a villain who seems destined to succeed, and then coming to our senses with the warrior academic in a tomb of bones heaped upon centuries of bones? Several times I wondered if the author also has a military background because of terms, such as "double-tap" and escaping a grenade explosion with a "commando-roll.." There's no mention of such a background in Penn's bio, but the verisimilitude of the action makes it all the more believable. This book is apocalyptic in the literal sense of the word as explained by the author. Apocalypse means "unveiling, an uncovering of secret knowledge about heavenly realms." It's a wonderful and disturbing adventure. She touches on topics spoken of often in the 1970s as the only solution to the world's problems, and rouses disturbing realizations in the reader. Where do we stand on such issues of population control as a means of ending violence, environmental disaster, and placing meaning on life while deciding which lives are of value. It will be difficult waiting for the next in this series, but no doubt worth it.

When you have an author with a passion for writing, and the courage to publicly work on improving and refining her craft, you can expect to see her writing getting better over time. When you have an author who loves research and religion and thrillers the way that J. F. Penn has demonstrated that she does, you can expect a book that is fast paced and filled with the kind of details that keeps you curious and eager to keep paging down through your kindle. I bought the first book in the Arcane series when it came out in paperback and was immediately fascinated by the characters and the history and the thrill ride of a story. I was only slightly disappointed in the editing but I loved the story enough that when the sequel came out I bought it. Then I got busy and forgot to read it and it got buried in my kindle. This week I was too sick to do anything else so I was digging around and found this book. I opened the story and literally could not put it down. I had a fever and my eyes ached and reading made my head hurt but there was no stopping. There were also none of the editing errors in this book. It is cleanly written, fast paced, and flows like olive oil, smooth and silky and delicious. We find lovely and powerful Morgan Sierra again battling for the whole world against evil in the guise of the humans who are willing servants to it. We find ancient Prophecy and art and literature, side by side with modern cutting edge technology like virtual reality libraries, and cutting edge, scary genetics where the Eugenics issues are proven to have survived Hitler. The wide range of this story takes us from the dark, bone filled catacombs to the brightly lit baby farm lab. We find the nastiest humans made nastier by their willing obedience to evil and the best humans forced to become even better in the fight against evil. Well done sequel. Read it, but read Stone of Fire first.

Crypt of Bone's author is new to me, and I must say I truly enjoyed this dark, skillfully written religious thriller. The fast-moving storyline is cleverly conceived and executed, and contains an inspired mix of historical fact and fiction. Though the plot is intricate, Penn has managed to weave the numerous threads into a neat, action-packed thrill ride. One aspect of Crypt of Bone that I especially enjoyed were the varied locations in which the story takes place. I love it when a book pulls me along to new or strange parts of the world. All in all, its a good read that I can highly recommend.

If you enjoy thrillers that combine supernatural elements and also cutting edge technology, here's a good read for you. Joanna Penn will keep you turning the pages but also bring you up to date on a number of current trends and breakthoughs in the tech area. I, for one, was amazed at the depth of her knowledge in such areas. Her main characters, including villains, are not only believable but fully three-dimensional. I know that's the case when I find myself worrying about them and getting anxious to skip ahead to answer my burning questions. Ms. Penn's main character Morgan doesn't have superpowers, she's vulnerable but also highly intelligent and capable physically too. And she does fight her way out of some scary and nasty situations. The novels Stone of Fire and Crypt of Bone are the first two novels in Penn's planned trilogy. They can be read individually of course and are each complete in themselves, but I think they would be most enjoyable read in order (Stone of Fire first). You can bet I'm waiting for the third in the serious to come out. Highly recommended. (A note to Christian readers. These books are thrillers and realistic. They are not devotionals. They contain some potentially offensive language and sexual situations.)

I have a natural tendency to shy away from thrillers and fantasy novels because I just don't "get them" and I don't feel able to relate to a story so far removed from my own life experiences. Yet sometimes I'm drawn to try new genres as I was drawn to Joanna Penn's Crypt of Bone, an Arkane thriller. This book, Crypt of Bone, was second to Penn's début novel Stone of Fire in the Arkane thriller series. It was a stand-alone read although I felt the characterisation may have been left to the first novel, because I couldn't "see" the main characters and felt they were a little under-developed. Crypt of Bone is described as a Dan Brown meets Lara Croft, but as I haven't read anything of Dan Brown I tell if that is true or not, although Lara Croft/Indiana Jones is a very apt description. Morgan Sierra and her side-kick Jake Timber take on an organisation called Thanatos, who under the cover of improving mankind with, want to unleash a power that will kill billions of "sub-standard" humans. Thanatos wants to carry on Hitler's work and remake humankind without imperfections. It's chilling because, I suppose, it's been tried and very believable. Morgan and Jake are on a mission to find the Devil's Bible, and stop Thanatos before the final curse is activated, and right to the end I was left wondering if they will manage it. There were many action scenes along with the more sedate which took us on a journey to various counties around the world. Morgan's group, Arkane, was a brilliant and convincing organisation, I was tempted to Google it to make sure it really was fiction! The book was intelligent, the pace fast, and over all a very good read for thriller readers. It was very well researched, and I felt I was in the hands of a very competent author. The only reason this didn't make the 5/5 mark was because I couldn't relate to the main characters; but maybe reading the first book will correct this wrong!