Nikki Marmery's Reviews > The Bone Hunters

A perfect historical novel. Burns’ tale of fossilists and monsters, misfits and miscreants, expertly explores the tensions between reason and superstition in Regency Lyme Regis. Her characters are the outsiders: those barred from the fashionable Assembly Rooms, who know the gnaw of hunger but thirst for justice. Her settings are exquisitely drawn, with evocative details - the Purbeck oysters; the smugglers’ lace – that nail the time and place with the certitude of an ammonite encased in Cretaceous rock. The monster she seeks to expose is alive and kicking, not safely interred in the cliffs of Black Ven…
The Bonehunters is a novel of resistance, of non-conformity; a celebration of passion and curiosity and a glorious tribute to all those truthseekers locked out of the hallowed halls of learning for being the wrong sex or class. I absolutely adored it.