Bones Of The Earth
Copyright 2002 by Michael Swannick
I first read this on the 4th April 2003.
It is hard for famous paleontologist Richard Leyster to believe
his unusual visitor with his tale of time-travel and a chance to travel
into the distant past. Pretty soon, however, he and his colleagues will be
making a desperate, terrifying trek through the late Cretaceous period.
Very strange. One's first thought is that Michael has gone for the
teenage market, and then after a few more pages one thinks that he is
doing a Michael Crichton, Eventually one decides that he has done both -
this novel is even published as "Fiction", not SF.
It rolls along merrily introducing time travel, the dinos, casually
dismissing most of the paradoxes that time travel introduces, and
slowly revealing how and why time travel has become available.
The first hundred pages feel like preparation for something, some great
adventure.
The last hundred pages are great, getting better as it draws to a close,
with a superbly touching ending.
The problem is the middle of the book. Sadly, the walk in the jungle
simply was not impressive enough.
So the novel was a disappointment, masked by a fine ending.
For the dinosaur lovers amongst you, here's the inside cover of the
book. The dinos look surprisingly benign and the oddity of the
illustration matches to some extent the oddity of the book.
Loaded on the 1st August 2003.
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