This is the second book of the Bone graphic novel series, which continues the epic Disney-meets-Lord Of the Rings adventure from the first book.  While the jokes and action was as enjoyable as the first, the main plot line doesn’t progress as much as the first book.

When last we left our heroes, the richest bone in Boneville Phoney Bone’s greedy antic and shady business deals got himself and his cousins, Fone Bone and Smiley Bone, kicked out of Boneville. They got lost in a valley and separated. Fone Bone befriends a young human named Thorn and her grandmother Rosie, hoping they can help him find his cousins. For some unknown reason the rat creatures are hunting after Phoney Bone at the insistence of a mysterious figure in a hood and who carries a scythe. They break an ancient truce and attack the villages around them. Meanwhile, a dragon protects the Bones for some unknown reason. Eventually the three Bone cousins are reunited, but only after surviving the rat creature’s invasions and Phoney Bone ends up in debt to a bar keeper in town who is preparing for the big cow race festival.

In this latest installment, continues where the last part left off with the cow race festival. Phoney Bone is back to his old antics, trying to fix the cow race so everyone votes on a mystery cow (who is really just Smiley Bone in disguise). Meanwhile, Fone Bone who is in love with Thorn finds himself jealous when Thorn starts flirting with a young teenage male who is a honey merchant in for the festival to sell his wares. He ends up going off into the woods where the rat creatures find him and attempt chase him down for their meal. Thorn keeps having a mysterious dream of her childhood where she is taken to a cave with a bunch of dragons and told she must stay there, while some hooded figures head off to perform some other mysterious errand. The fixed cow race goes off, but at the last minute the bar-tender bets huge on Rosie, ruining Phoney Bone’s plans to fix the race and take all the winnings for himself. He catches up with Smiley Bone disguised as a cow just before the race begins and jumps into his costume to make sure he wins the race rather than throw it, which was the original plan.  While running the Bone cousins meet up in a pit full of the rat creatures. They run and the rat creatures collide with the great cow race. Rosie wins the race, after all, but the towns folk all run away from the arriving rat creatures. Later, Rosie and the inn-keeper are traveling in the darkness. The fact that Phoney Bone fixed the race became known and the townspeople were going to seriously hurt him, but Rosie and the inn-keeper save them. The inn-keeper wants to know why Rosie would vouch for these Bones, and she tells him that the rat creatures are after the Bones for some unknown reason and she thinks it might coincide with some important secret about her granddaughter Thorn (the secret about her remains a mystery). At the very end, they begin to repair the damaged house, which was damaged during the rat creature’s attack from the first installment.

Many of the same jokes from the first book are continued, such as one of the rat creature’s obsession with quiche, Fone Bone’s love of Moby Dick, which he can be seen reading, and Smiley Bone’s complete stupidity. The epic side of the plot doesn’t really progress, but the story of Phoney Bone trying to fix the cow race is amusing and gives us plenty of insight about why he was kicked out of Boneville in the first place. Overall, I’m not entirely convinced this is a particularly deep graphic novel, but the story, dialogue, characters, and art is extremely entertaining.

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