Despite an early suspicion this book would be just another Jurassic Park style action book, I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be really very, very good. Sure, some simmilarities to Jurassic Park are evident, but Preston took in in a bit different direction to make it very entertaining. ( )

I loved Preston's non-fiction (Lost City and Lost Tomb) so I wanted to try some fiction, and being a mammoth fan this looked exactly right. (It's not really about mammoths.) The genre keeps shifting from police procedural to horror film to murder mystery to true crime to James Bond film - a gumbo of tropes. It is good fun that's about it. ( )

Bringing extinct animals back to life has dire consequences. ( )

I've long been a fan of Douglas Preston's thrillers. He always teams a first-rate cast with insider knowledge and an edge-of-your-seat story. Since I'm also a Jurassic Park fan, Preston's story, which revolves around a resort containing Pleistocene megafauna, was right up my alley, too.

The two main characters take some time to get used to each other. This is CBI Agent Frankie Cash's first case in Major Crimes. John Wayne lookalike Sheriff Jim Colcord takes one look at the heavy-set woman and mentally raises an eyebrow. It doesn't take long for him to learn that she has a razor-sharp mind... and that she's much fitter than he is. Cash loves Jurassic Park, but it's a bit of a bummer when she learns that the megafauna of Erebus have all had any aggressive genes removed, which has had the effect of turning them into scaredy cats. But that turns out to be a very good thing because something else is very wrong in this resort.

Strong interesting characters. Check. A fast-paced, thrill ride of a story. Check. A setting that not only involves huge creatures from another age but a movie being filmed in the valley as well as a labyrinth of old mines. Check. All this was a treasure trove for my imagination, and I did "watch" a lot of it on my mental movie screen. But. For some reason, I couldn't completely buy into the secret heart of Preston's story. Even though his Afterward was fascinating. (Don't miss it.) And since I couldn't willingly suspend 100% of my disbelief, Extinction became a very good story instead of a fantastic one. However, it certainly does give readers plenty of food for thought. ( )

Too transparent, too much over the top, too thin character development. A thriller in form only. That said, I still read it. I’m disappointed in myself. ( )