Dragon Teeth

Scott Brick is a narrator at the top of his game, and this is a meaty tale for him to get his--well, teeth--into. It tells of the rivalry between nineteenth-century paleontologists Edwin Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh--a rivalry so intense as to, at times, border on insanity. It's told from the point of view of William Johnson, a spoiled, privileged Yale student who is forced to fend for himself and guard Cope's finds in a lawless gold-rush town after he is the sole survivor of an Indian attack. There's action aplenty, but the narrative develops at a steady pace rather than the unputdownable pace of better-known Crichton titles. But it's still a compelling listen--and one that will leave the listener feeling pleasantly educated as well as entertained. C.A.T. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

March 13, 2017
Crichton pays homage, again, to Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World in this entertaining historical thriller whose manuscript was discovered posthumously. But instead of the living dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, the focus here is on the fossilized ones at the center of the late 19th century’s feud between rival pioneering paleontologists. As in Conan Doyle’s novel, the hero is a callow young man who volunteers for a perilous expedition, headed by an eccentric academic, to prove a point, and grows up in the process. Here, it’s Yale undergraduate William Johnson, who is embarrassed by a classmate’s taunt into a bet that he will spend the summer in a West still populated by hostile Indians. By pretending to be a photographer, Johnson persuades Yale’s Othniel C. Marsh to include him on a fossil hunt. Marsh is worried that Professor Edward Cope, a one-time friend, will try to take credit for his discoveries, and Johnson finds himself dealing with the consequences of their rivalry in a West made even more perilous in the aftermath of Custer’s last stand. Fans of Crichton’s historical suspense books, such as The Great Train Robbery, will be pleased.

September 4, 2017
Set in 1876 on the Western frontier, Crichton’s recently discovered novel tells the story of two competing paleontologists pillaging the Wild West for dinosaur fossils. To win a bet, Yale student William Johnson joins an expedition with the eccentric and world-renowned paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. Prone to paranoia, Marsh becomes convinced that Johnson is working for his rival, the paleontologist Edwin Drinker Cope, and leaves Johnson to fend for himself in a dangerous part of Wyoming. The tale has all the hallmarks of a Crichton adventure: scientific discovery, dueling scientists, and bravado. Veteran voice actor Brick delivers the story smoothly and heightens the intensity of the survival on the frontier with his pacing. There’s not much for Brick to work with in the way of characterizations—Johnson, Marsh, and Cope are not all that dynamic of characters—but Brick does his best to develop them when he can, such as adding hints of wickedness when portraying Marsh’s paranoia. Crichton’s widow Sherri reads her postscript at the end, providing the context for the creation of Crichton’s novel. Despite the shortcomings of the story, the audiobook will please die-hard fans of the author. A Harper hardcover.