'sam doesn't care about dean' a demon took control over dean and drove the Impala off from where they were stranded in buttfuck nowhere AND SAM RAN ALL THE WAY BEHIND THE IMPALA AND CHASED AFTER DEAN TO THE MOTEL! ON FEET!
Welcome to my not-quite review of the third Supernatural novel, Bone Key.
Author: Keith R.A. DeCandido
Timeline: Set after Episode 3.07 A Very Supernatural Christmas
Location: Key West, Florida
Synopsis: Sam and Dean head to Key West, Florida to investigate reports of supercharged ghosts. What they encounter is far deadlier and far older than they ever anticipated.
Warning: Spoilers abound!
I found this book very enjoyable. It was certainly a much faster read than the previous two. With the story being further along in the series, there are a lot of callbacks to prior episodes, mostly concerning Dean's demon deal.
LGBTQ+ representation: Sam and Dean stay at a B&B with a lesbian couple and another gay couple is highlighted. Normally, I wouldn't mention this, but the book was written in 2008, which may have been early for representation in the media (I'll admit I haven't paid close attention to the evolution of such), and I think is still relevant today. Of course, Dean is quite straight in the novel, going after multiple women, so it fits with canon.
Included are a few references to sexual situations, e.g., a woman being leered at by her step-brothers, to a ghost who was gang-raped. It's not graphic by any means, but it's interesting to see how a novel can share more than a tv series can (or at least get past the censors).
Bobby appears in the book as Sam and Dean share the New Year with him drinking champagne out of whiskey glasses. This whole scene leads into a page's worth of trolling Ryan Seacrest. LOL!!!
Dean: "Who's the genius who thought replacing Dick Clark with Ryan Seacrest was a good idea?"
Sam: "Well, he was on American Idol."
Dean: "Dude, you are not equating being on that lame-ass Star Search wannabe show with American Bandstand, are you?"
Bone Key has fewer references to the boy's past than the previous two books, but here is a fun bit: "I don't need to make myself tall, Dean, I am tall," Sam said in that tone he always used when he gloatingly reminded Dean that, for all that Sam was the "little" brother, he had a good three inches on Dean. Sammy'd been using that tone since hitting his growth spurt at age fourteen and shooting past Dean on the height chart. Back then, of course, Sam provided those reminders approximately once every five minutes. "Hey," teenaged Sam would say, "can I borrow your jacket? Oh, wait - it's too small for me!""
In addition to the above, the book mentions John trying to put Dean in martial arts classes and it eventually failing because they moved around too much, and Dean's more of a brawler.
There's additional insight into Dean's intelligence that I find fits very well with canon after both acknowledging they know what laissez-faire means: 'When they were kids, Sam was always the book-smart one who liked studying, while Dean was more of the type to beat up the nerds, and who hated admitting to knowing anything. Smart made you an outcast, and given their hard-traveling ways, Dean had enough issues in school with that. So he adopted the jock persona of not caring about learning anything. That tendency still bled into his personality, to Sam's annoyance, to the point where Dean would profess ignorance on subjects Sam knew damn well he was knowledgeable about. Anything to not be the nerdy kid."
First, I don't believe for one second that Dean beat up nerds. Bullies, yes. Second, I can totally see the not wanting to seem smart as part of Dean's personality. He does this multiple times in the tv series. Sometimes Sam calls him on it, other times he lets him get away with it.
At one point, a demon requests that the boys work with them so they can both get rid of the 'big bad'. They are reluctant, as they should be, but then she brings up Ruby. Most of that fits with canon, but there was this part that confused me because I don't remember anything like this in the TV series: 'Ruby had also dropped some hints about Sam and Dean's mother that were leading Sam down some disturbing roads - sufficiently disturbing that he hadn't shared Ruby's revelations (and his own research) on the subject with Dean.'
If anyone remembers what that might be about, let me know!
As the end nears, there is a lot of Dean worrying about Sam, and a final showdown that basically uses the love he has for Sam as an anchor and uses that power to destroy the big bad.
Some final notes:
Funny scene: Dean has to pick up Bobby at the airport (yes, Bobby took a plane). His fear of flying comes back in full force, so much so that he seriously considers smoking. In fact, if he's going to Hell anyway, what's the harm? Luckily, budgetary reasons win out. Smoking is expensive.
Brotherly moment/Hurt Dean: I'll let this section speak for itself: 'Dean had suffered plenty of pain in his life. He'd been beaten up, beat down, shot at, stabbed, cut, electrocuted, punched, kicked, bit, thrown across more rooms than he could count, and run over by a Mack truck. If you combined all that pain, It was only a fraction of what Dean felt now.... No matter how bad it got, though, he refused to let the protection for Sam and the others falter. It didn't matter if he died in the effort - he was dead anyhow - but that sonofabitch wasn't taking Sam with him.'
Extra Bonus: For readers of my other blog: '[People] came in from the parking-lot entrance, as Megan had, past that smelly guy who was selling his poetry.'
the books are so cute because being in both sam and dean's heads really highlight how geeky they actually are. dean is just barely restraining himself from yell-explaining that his eyes are actually hazel (not blue) to a hot girl he just met at a bar while thinking about how the band whose music he's yelling over is covering a live performance from the 70s (& being able to tell which songs come after the other) while sam is only there with him (sam wanted to stay at their inn or whatever and do research) because the bar is built around a tree that's a major landmark for local history and he wanted to see it
