Apparently the editorial directive to the authors of this series was "We know you're not Douglas Adams, but please pretend to be as hard as you can so that the desperation shines through more clearly with each subsequent sentence." ( )

Ghost Devices sees Bernice on a mission to a strange artifact on a distant planet. Again. Surrounded by a bunch of "comedy" academics. Again. Also, I am pretty sure a pubcrawl is involved in her decision. Again. The early Benny books really suffer from a monotony of setup. The first half of the book is awful. Nothing interesting happens, and when it does, Bernice narrates it after-the-fact for some reason. Most of the people on the dig are dead boring, and so are their antics. The plot keeps on jumping to characters who seem to have nothing to do with anything (the People and some criminals). The jokes aren't even funny. I really struggled to get through it.

Then, halfway through, the book suddenly improves. I don't know if Bucher-Jones hit his stride or if I was suddenly in a good mood, but the archaeological dig was abandoned, the number of characters was reduced to a manageable number, and the jokes became utterly hilarious. Benny is kinda along for the ride for most of the second half, but she has a number of great moments, and so does an air vent she befriends. I was constantly stopping to tell my wife about the hilarious jokes, and the action sequences were tight. The ending was huge, bizarrely so, but it worked. I don't know what happened here, but at least I got to read half of a great book.