Rate:
3/5
Goodreads Description:
Michael Crichton's recently discovered novel—an adventure set in the Wild West during the golden age of fossil hunting.
The year is 1876. Warring Indian tribes still populate America’s western territories even as lawless gold-rush towns begin to mark the landscape. In much of the country it is still illegal to espouse evolution. Against this backdrop two monomaniacal paleontologists pillage the Wild West, hunting for dinosaur fossils, while surveilling, deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars.
Into this treacherous territory plunges the arrogant and entitled William Johnson, a Yale student with more privilege than sense. Determined to survive a summer in the west to win a bet against his arch-rival, William has joined world-renowned paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh on his latest expedition. But when the paranoid and secretive Marsh becomes convinced that William is spying for his nemesis, Edwin Drinker Cope, he abandons him in Cheyenne, Wyoming, a locus of crime and vice. William is forced to join forces with Cope and soon stumbles upon a discovery of historic proportions. With this extraordinary treasure, however, comes exceptional danger, and William’s newfound resilience will be tested in his struggle to protect his cache, which pits him against some of the West’s most notorious characters.
Review:
This book went by unbearably slow.
The plot s a promising one and I was very excited about it but when it actually came down to it the lengthy descriptions that the characters gave just grinded my gears.
There never seemed to be a thrilling moment as there was in his other stories and it overall failed to impress me because of it. The whole thing almost felt political and focuses a little too much over men fighting over a dinosaur bone and hardly at all over having an adventure which is what I was expecting out of this book.
Recommend it?
You can skip this one.
