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Title: Dinosaur Lake
Series: Dinosaur Lake
Author: Kathryn Griffith
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 439
Format: Kindle digital edition
Henry, former New York City cop, now Chief Ranger, is dealing with
budget cuts for his staff while the park he oversee's is dealing with
some minor earthquakes. One of the tremors unearth's some heretofore
unknown dinosaur bones and a group of archeologists descend on the find,
like vultures on the rotting carcass of a cow. At the same time, long
time members of the community are going missing, the group of local
homeless people reports a monster eating some of their number and
Justin, the ONE GOOD ARCHEOLOGIST, finds tracks leading from the water.
Big tracks.
A dinosaur exists, it is smart and it wants to eat people, a lot of
people. For some reason it is now exclusively up to Ranger Henry and his
trusty cohorts [ex FBI Agent that would make Fox Mulder blush, older
but stern submarine operator and of course, THE GOOD ARCHEOLOGIST] to go
down into the subterranean caves, while a huge earthquake is predicted,
and hunt down the dinosaur so that the namby pambies in the Gubba'ment
can't capture it and cause even more havoc.
What I wanted:
a story where a dinosaur caused havoc, ate people and then died in glorious battle.
What I got:
a story where a dinosaur caused havoc, ate people and then died in glorious battle.
However, that was only the backdrop of the story. The real story was
about how sensitive Henry, Justin and the other men were and how they
all bonded and formed everlasting ties of friendship [until the dinosaur
ate some of them of course] and with the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, defeated
the mean ol' dinosaur.
At the 60% mark I started skimming. At the 75% mark I started reading
1 page in 10. And by the end I still got the story but without all the
clutter.
This was over 400 pages and it should have been cut down to just
under 300. To do that however, the characterization would have had to
have been axed, the action ramped up and a lot of the extraneous weight
gotten rid of. I don't need to know about Henry's daughter's bad life
choices and how she's getting her life back on track and how Justin is
falling in love with her. I don't need to know the backstories or family
histories of the 2 men driving the submersible. Sure, it makes them
"real" characters but so what? Those 2 men were dinosaur food.
Now my main problem. Henry. Loving, gentle, caring Henry. Who is
supposed to be an Ex New York City cop. Who got shot by a 10 year old
and had to plug the kid. He is an emotional Gary Stu and really made me
sick. In one instance, his wife sneaks into the danger zone to get
pictures of the dinosaur to save the local paper even though Henry has
reiterated over and over and over how dangerous and smart the dinosaur
is. So of course she runs into the dinosaur and Henry's best friend
saves her, at the expense of his own life. Does Henry get angry or
upset? Oh no. He gently and carefully takes care of his wife because she
almost died and he really needs to focus on that. Forget about that her
selfish actions DIRECTLY caused the death of a good man, for no point.
In fact, it was probably better that George died that way, so he
wouldn't end up in a nursing home or something. The "bonding" scene
between Henry and the former FBI Agent was what made me throw up in my
mouth though. FBI-man tells a story about a whole town going missing and
how the gubba'ment covered it all up. It added pages to the book
without adding one bit to the dinosaur eating people.
The dinosaur eating people was the blank canvas for everything else
to be painted on. It was the paper while it should have been the
painting. Frustrating as Phrack.
There are 2 more books in the Dinosaur Lake series, but since I'm
guessing they're in the exact same vein as this, I'd rather cut off my
toes than read them. Because if I can read 1 page in 10 and still get
the story, something is very wrong.
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