Tyrannosaur Canyon (Wyman Ford Series, 1)

Book on CD performed by Scott Sowers

From the book jacket: A moon rock missing for thirty years … Five buckets of blood-soaked sand found in a New Mexico canyon … A scientist with ambition enough to kill … A monk who will redeem the world … A dark agency with a deadly mission … The greatest scientific discovery of all time… What fire bolt from the galactic dark shattered the Earth eons ago, and now hides in that remote cleft in the southwest United States known as Tyrannosaur Canyon?

My reactions:
This was one wild ride of a thriller! I was all set to follow independently wealth veterinarian Tom Broadbent not just through this novel, but any future ones. He has all the markings of a major series hero – wealth, good looks, a show more noble heart, the confidence and admiration of the community, and a wife who is both smart and beautiful. He’s also tenacious and does not suffer fools gladly, even when those fools are the police who seem to suspect HIM rather than listen to his story of the murdered prospector he found in the desert.

Tom’s got his work cut out for him in trying to find out the identity of the murdered man. He’s also determined to find out what the old man was up to. He recalls a visit to a monastery to treat their sheep and meeting a monk who had some experience with codes, so he decides to ask for the monk’s help in deciphering the dead man’s notebook.

The monk is an ex-CIA operative now living a life of contemplation in a remote monastery, and he is the character who steals the show. And then I realized that the series title is: Wyman Ford, NOT Tom Broadbent.

Plenty of action, more villains that you can shake a stick at, twists and turns and danger to keep the reader turning pages and trying (in vain, in my case at least) to guess where this is going. And I loved that the T-rex gets a few chapters of her own to “narrate.” I will say this, for all the testosterone on the pages, Preston’s women are no shrinking violets. They give as good (or better) than they get – smart, determined, strong in mind and body!

Scott Sowers does an excellent job reading the audiobook. He sets a good pace and has the skill to give the many characters sufficiently distinct voices. As a bonus, there is an interview with the author at the end of the audiobook. I found it fascinating to learn a little more of Preston’s background, including his years working for the American Museum of Natural History. show less

Every single review on the physical book is a complete lie. For some reason all of them decided to compare it to Michael Crichton and Jurassic Park, but don't let them fool you. The comparison to Jurassic Park makes no sense because there aren't even any living dinosaurs in this book just one single fossil. All the reviews declare that Preston outdoes Crichton in his "scientific" writing, this is a lie. Crichton has an actual PhD in chemistry. Preston includes a few dense paragraphs where he lists obscure scientific instruments or dinosaur names, besides that there is little to no actual science in this book. It's a decent thriller, but don't be misled about what it really is.

A techno-thriller for dinosaur nerds.

Although the cover art and blurbs present Tyrannosaur Canyon as a Jurassic Park knock-off, this book is about humans who chase fossils for both the brief glimpse into a lost world and the financial rewards which accompany it, all wrapped in the cloak of a fast-paced thriller.

Here's a bit of a disclaimer: I grew up wanting to be a paleontologist, and am predisposed to favor any story about this topic which is at least competently written. Douglas Preston's prose isn't brilliant, but it's certainly more than competent, and by the end I was glad that I'd picked this book up. If the story had revolved around stamps or antiques rather than tyrannosaurs and trilobites it would have still been a good show more airport read, but as it stands it was irresistible for me. (And frankly, the detail and affection with which Preston delves into the world of fossil hunting makes it obvious that he's more than a bit of a dinosaur nerd himself. That bit of passion from an author goes a long way toward giving life to any novel, regardless of topic or genre.)

Preston begins the mystery with the Apollo 17 moon landing, and he quite cleverly uses the actual dialogue from the mission transcripts to build the prologue for the story. From there we jump to the American Southwest in 2005, where a man is about to be killed as he returns from the site of a major find. By chance, a passerby hears the shot and tries to help the dying man. This good samaritan is Tom Broadbent, one of the main characters in an earlier Preston book (don't let this put you off-- I've never read that earlier book, and didn't feel that I was lost or walking into a sequel). Much as you'd expect, Tom and his wife are soon pulled into the crossfire as events spin out of control.

As in most thrillers, there are several villains, attacking our protagonists from several different vectors. As you'd expect, the villains with the most screen time are the most fleshed out, but I was disappointed to find that they were a bit of a mixed bag. While one heavy has outside interests and aspirations that round him out as a person, at least one had motivations which simply didn't ring true to my ear.

The science and weaponry details are there for geeks of multiple stripes; this is the kind of book that specifies what make and caliber of handgun is being waved under our hero's nose, while still finding time to ruminate on the different types of sediment thrown up by the impact which wiped out the dinosaurs.

Preston references paleontologists and bone hunters from the early days of museum expeditions to Bob Bakker, and mixes them effortlessly with car chases and kidnappings. (The desert wandering ex-CIA monk doesn't mix in so effortlessly, but hey-- they can't all be winners.)

Don't let the cover fool you-- it's no Jurassic Park clone, and Tyrannosaur Canyon is worth a read. show less

A thriller from start to finish. A well-rounded cast of characters; even the villains are engaging. The dynamic plot covers a broad scope, supporting a compelling premise about the origins of life on Earth.

In this story we are introduced again to Tom Broadbent (from "The Codex") as he stumbles across a dying, gunshot man. Before the man dies, he passes on a dark secret within a notebook of numbers and importunes Broadbent to see the notebook returned to his daughter. This task, difficult because Broadbent does not know who the man is, soon involves great personal peril to both Broadbent and his wife as people begin to try killing them. Lots of people actually. An entire cast of scary bad guys, from crazed ex-cons, soldiers, sociopathic creepy scientists, government agents, and others come crawling out of the woodwork looking to end the Broadbents in various terminally nasty ways, for the notebook itself turns out to be something of a show more treasure map. The Broadbents find help in some unlikely places and people, and make many improbable escapes as they race to determine what secrets the notebook holds and what to do when the secrets are revealed.

This was an action-packed, if somewhat implausible story. I found the villains to be kind of lame. The evil ex-con who runs a convict dating service, the evil Museum curator, the coldly impassive Asian government agent. All seemed a little over the top. This being said, I love the books written by these two authors. show less

Exciting well researched thriller, but a little over the top.

The science, specifically the geology, was absolutely spot on. The research that went into this novel must have been an incredible undertaking. Even for someone with a background working for the Natural History Museum. When he described the mineralogy equipment and how they are used in such detail, I was bowled over. Literally the description of the optical microscope was masterful. His explanation of the K-T boundary and the theories surrounding the K-T extinction was just awesome. It certainly meshed with the latest research it was hard to argue that Preston didn’t do his homework. I would say his research and use of science is much better than Crichton and Jurassic Park. show more One of my favorite parts was the story, at the beginning of the major breaks, of the ordinary day in the life of a T. Rex just before the asteroid hit. Preston really has a knack for description whether describing a past event like the sea of tranquility, the impact of the asteroid, the fictional environments, or the characters.

While I think dinosaur and science buffs will find it interesting, the plot doesn't have the sense of wonder or thrills of JP. There are no living dinosaurs, although dinosaurs play a central role. And while it could have worked as a murder mystery had the author chose to hold back more information, he instead wrote a by-the-numbers thriller that doesn't get interesting until the late arrival of a new threat in the third act. It's the action sequences in the latter half of the book and connection to a larger government conspiracy that is so implausible and really ruin what could have been a very good book. It’s too bad really, I think the book could of stood by itself without the grand conspiracy. show less

DNF @ 37%

Even the best sci-thriller typically requires a certain commitment to suspend disbelief, and low expectations for literary merit and character development, but at least there's usually a sufficient payoff in the form of entertainment value to make it a worthwhile trade-off. Alas, this book has every shortfall on the list, with cartoonishly one-dimensional characters, a weak plot full of holes, gratuitous techno-babble, etc.

But the reason I decided to stop is that it isn't fun. At all. It's dull and tedious and very very dumb.