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A review by books_n_pickles
Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton
adventurous
informative
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
I went to the library with Areg to find him a page turner and I found one for myself, as well! We got home around 4, had an afternoon tea, and by 9 pm I was done. Whew!
This turned out to be much better historical fiction than I was expecting--there's a biographical fiction element, with major secondary characters including real dinosaur bone hunters and outlaws, even though our protagonist, William Johnson, is fictional.
Johnson is a lazy, spoiled, Ivy-league rich boy who talks his way into a trip out west to dig for bones only on a bet, not realizing just how paranoid and, well, crazy the renowned Professor Othniel Marsh is. He spends his semester learning photography to maintain his cover, which already does a bit to tame his pride by giving him a task he actually has to work at to excel at--no paying his way through this one. The book description tells you what happens next: Marsh becomes convinced that Johnson is a spy sent by his rival, Edward Cope, and leaves him behind in Wyoming.
Who should happen to find him but Cope himself, who offers to take Johnson along on his own bone-hunting expedition. Contrary to Marsh's belief, Cope is not following him to steal his bones--instead, he's striking out into Montana territory on his own, without army protection, right as the Great Sioux War is picking up into full swing. To make matters worse, Marsh has slandered Cope far and wide, so that everywhere he goes he bumps into rumors and accusations that prejudice the people whose help he most needs for a safe expedition.
The rest of the story is so action-packed that a full summary would take too much space. (I'm a bit conscious of how long my last two reviews have been, particularly the one for a 120-page book.) Highlights include a successful dig, a tension-packed encounter between Cope and Marsh, meetings both peaceful and plot-propulsively hostile with Crow and Sioux American Indians, a second separation that leaves Johnson in possession of Cope's most significant find of the summer, races and escapes across the Badlands, and a high-tension couple of months in the notorious Deadwood Gulch, where no one can believe that Johnson would be so dead set on protecting boxes of bones--he must be guarding something more valuable.
Johnson's new-found photography skills come in useful in maintaining his finances but turn disastrous when he captures an image of a murderer who won't hesitate to kill again in order to destroy the evidence. Fortunately, he has friends as well as enemies among the notorious outlaws: the wily Earp brothers and a young, first-generation Chinese boy are on his side as long as he has money, but those professional relationships yield more loyalty than they are, strictly speaking, worth. Another bone-rattling race out of Deadwood to escape his unintended enemies leads Johnson to what ought to be safety...until a final confrontation with none other than the conniving Professor Marsh.
All along the way, Crichton seamlessly integrates real American history, even including some excerpts from books and newspapers of the time, to illuminate just how rapidly the American West was "opening" to "progress", and the tragic and bloody results of that rapid expansion. These asides are concise, rarely taking a whole page and never slowing the plot (for me, at least). He does caution readers in an afterword not to read the book as history, pointing to a few places where he fudged timelines to demonstrate that the book is fiction. <i>Dragon Bones</i> was published almost ten years posthumously, and had he written it today Crichton probably would have been encouraged to be more balanced in describing the devastation wreaked on the American Indian populations. Though he does mention some of the ways that the U.S. government deliberately decimated their way of life, writing a thriller from the perspective of a white boy from the east coast does skew the perspective enough to make me uncomfortable. I'm fortunate in knowing just enough about this time in history to read critically.
Honestly, my biggest beef with this book is the T-rex skull on the front and sharp teeth decorating the section breaks in the pages. Johnson and Cope make a significant discovery in the Montana badlands, but T-rex ain't it: the bones they find are from the largest herbivore found up to that point, not a carnivore. Ah well, that's book marketing for you. It's really no big deal to the story, as the bones are carefully packed away in boxes for most of the plot.
If you're looking for a fun and informative historical thriller, give <i>Dragon Bones</i> a shot!
This turned out to be much better historical fiction than I was expecting--there's a biographical fiction element, with major secondary characters including real dinosaur bone hunters and outlaws, even though our protagonist, William Johnson, is fictional.
Johnson is a lazy, spoiled, Ivy-league rich boy who talks his way into a trip out west to dig for bones only on a bet, not realizing just how paranoid and, well, crazy the renowned Professor Othniel Marsh is. He spends his semester learning photography to maintain his cover, which already does a bit to tame his pride by giving him a task he actually has to work at to excel at--no paying his way through this one. The book description tells you what happens next: Marsh becomes convinced that Johnson is a spy sent by his rival, Edward Cope, and leaves him behind in Wyoming.
Who should happen to find him but Cope himself, who offers to take Johnson along on his own bone-hunting expedition. Contrary to Marsh's belief, Cope is not following him to steal his bones--instead, he's striking out into Montana territory on his own, without army protection, right as the Great Sioux War is picking up into full swing. To make matters worse, Marsh has slandered Cope far and wide, so that everywhere he goes he bumps into rumors and accusations that prejudice the people whose help he most needs for a safe expedition.
The rest of the story is so action-packed that a full summary would take too much space. (I'm a bit conscious of how long my last two reviews have been, particularly the one for a 120-page book.) Highlights include a successful dig, a tension-packed encounter between Cope and Marsh, meetings both peaceful and plot-propulsively hostile with Crow and Sioux American Indians, a second separation that leaves Johnson in possession of Cope's most significant find of the summer, races and escapes across the Badlands, and a high-tension couple of months in the notorious Deadwood Gulch, where no one can believe that Johnson would be so dead set on protecting boxes of bones--he must be guarding something more valuable.
Johnson's new-found photography skills come in useful in maintaining his finances but turn disastrous when he captures an image of a murderer who won't hesitate to kill again in order to destroy the evidence. Fortunately, he has friends as well as enemies among the notorious outlaws: the wily Earp brothers and a young, first-generation Chinese boy are on his side as long as he has money, but those professional relationships yield more loyalty than they are, strictly speaking, worth. Another bone-rattling race out of Deadwood to escape his unintended enemies leads Johnson to what ought to be safety...until a final confrontation with none other than the conniving Professor Marsh.
All along the way, Crichton seamlessly integrates real American history, even including some excerpts from books and newspapers of the time, to illuminate just how rapidly the American West was "opening" to "progress", and the tragic and bloody results of that rapid expansion. These asides are concise, rarely taking a whole page and never slowing the plot (for me, at least). He does caution readers in an afterword not to read the book as history, pointing to a few places where he fudged timelines to demonstrate that the book is fiction. <i>Dragon Bones</i> was published almost ten years posthumously, and had he written it today Crichton probably would have been encouraged to be more balanced in describing the devastation wreaked on the American Indian populations. Though he does mention some of the ways that the U.S. government deliberately decimated their way of life, writing a thriller from the perspective of a white boy from the east coast does skew the perspective enough to make me uncomfortable. I'm fortunate in knowing just enough about this time in history to read critically.
Honestly, my biggest beef with this book is the T-rex skull on the front and sharp teeth decorating the section breaks in the pages. Johnson and Cope make a significant discovery in the Montana badlands, but T-rex ain't it: the bones they find are from the largest herbivore found up to that point, not a carnivore. Ah well, that's book marketing for you. It's really no big deal to the story, as the bones are carefully packed away in boxes for most of the plot.
If you're looking for a fun and informative historical thriller, give <i>Dragon Bones</i> a shot!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism and Gun violence
Minor: Death
Period-accurate slurs and racism against American Indians (Crow and Sioux).