Saturday, June 30, 2007

Dinosaur Nexus by Lee Grimes (1994)

Paperback cover blurb

WHO OWNS THE PAST?

Time travel is a reality – as staggering new technology enables the crew of the Pegasus to journey back to the Late Cretaceous period. Here, in an era preceding the extinction of the dinosaur, a team of dedicated scientists expects to find answers to questions that have perplexed humankind for sixty-five million years. What they don’t expect is company.

The Heesh have come also – intelligent reptilian creatures from a parallel Earth, searching for the dinosaur they call the Prime Mother. And in this world of giant beasts, in a dangerous climate of fear and mistrust, human and Heesh alike must contend with one devastating possibility: that the success of either mission could condemn the other’s race to death.

My thoughts

Dinosaur Nexus starts with an interesting premise: Human time travelers in the Cretaceous period encounter intelligent dinosaurs from the future, and the two species come to realize that the very existence of the other may be determined by their actions in the past. Unfortunately, Grimes doesn’t stick with it. The plot is resolved rather unconvincingly halfway through the book, with the rest dedicated to a boring account about the start of diplomatic relations between the two races.

There’s nothing in Dinosaur Nexus that’s particularly memorable. Neither Cretaceous earth nor the alternate world of the intelligent dinosaurs is fleshed out in any great detail. I suspect it was written largely to capitalize on the dinosaur craze of the time, with the film Jurassic Park having been released the year before.

Trivia

  • Like the Yilané of Harry Harrison’s West of Eden trilogy, the Heesh are dominated by females.
Reviews

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