Bones Omnibus

In one volume for the first time is the complete Bones saga, presenting the occasionally heroic, easily distracted, yet ferociously loyal Pittsburgh police dog in nine tales of spellbinding mystery and Apocalyptic horror. In the five-part Early Years, the titular German shepherd's survival skills are honed as he faces down increasingly diabolical villains in the shadow of the coming Armageddon. Then in the four-part Apocalypse Saga, Bones confronts his destiny as devastating events conspire to decimate humanity and open the door to a new age."Trying to explain the Bones saga in a sound bite is all but impossible. Break it down into its constituent parts, and you'll end up with a soup of seemingly incompatible ingredients. Urban crime drama. Backwoods horror. Epic disaster thriller. Post-apocalyptic tragedy. Zombies. Mutants. Ghosts. Witches. Bigfoot. Put these elements in the hands of most writers and ask them to come up with something and you'll get a pungent mess, a lumpy broth that defies digestion. Like the sushi chef who knows how to serve the blowfish without poisoning his customer, you need a chef like Wheaton to make these flavors work.And work they do. The Bones saga thrills in a way very few horror series can: by surprising the reader. It's a sad truth that most genre fiction ends up being, by its nature, generic. Bones is anything but. I've read all nine Bones stories - from the twisted early horror yarns, through the chilling apocalypse trilogy, and on to the head-spinning Bigfoot coda - and couldn't even begin to predict where the tale would go from one story to the next.Even within the boundaries of each story, Bones chews up the rule book and leaves it shredded and slobbery. Freed from the predictable rhythms of narrative by his mute and reactionary lead character, Wheaton can introduce us to someone, immerse us in their life in a few deft paragraphs, let us follow them enough to share in their hopes and dreams, then destroy them utterly without pause or remorse. Through the impassive eyes of Bones, friend or foe alike, we're all just animals waiting to be hunted.It's a ruthless world, and Wheaton doesn't soften its edges with cutesy-poo anthropomorphism. Bones has no interior monologue, only instinct. He's heroic only in that he does what he's been trained for. He'll bond with you, help you, but, hey, if your eye gets torn out of its socket by a rabid seagull, you'd better believe he's going to gobble it up. There's an emotional distance in these stories that would be nihilistic if it weren't grounded in the animal kingdom. Forget Simba - this is the real circle of life." - From Dan Whitehead's introduction