The Language of Bees ***

*** The Language of Bees, Laurie R King, 2009

In The Language of Bees, King accomplished a difficult task - to write a cliff hanger with a satisfying ending. I didn't realize this story was continued in The God of the Hive, and when I got to the end, that didn't bother me at all. The ending felt like an ending. The important points were wrapped up and the loose threads felt like they would take care of themselves.

In this novel, King continues the use of mutiple viewpoints she started in the last novel, but instead of the large sections in the POV of either Russell or Holmes (omniscient) as in Locked Rooms, The Language of Bees is primarily in Russell's POV with the occasional scene of Holmes and Damien rendered largely as dialog with little POV orientation.

But that's all the technical stuff. As a reading experience this started out a bit slow, taking close to a hundred pages before Russell really gets engaged in the investigation. However, it makes up for lost time and pretty quickly turns into a nail biter. This is vintage King/Russell and should not be missed.