Friday, June 22, 2007

Tyrannosaur by David Drake (1993)

Paperback cover blurb

Tyrannosaurus rex – King Tyrant Lizard – the greatest predator the world has ever known. He ruled the earth long before many evolved.

Now man has found a way to travel back to those distant, prehistoric days.

And the greatest predator of one age is about to meet the most efficient killer of another… MAN!

Who is the hunter, and who the hunted?

And who will win the battle for supremacy?

My thoughts

Tyrannosaur is a reprint of Time Safari (above) meant to cash in on the dinosaur craze of the first Jurassic Park movie. The cover art – a profile of a T. rex with its mouth open – is clearly meant to invoke the logo from the film. The opening story of the original book, set in prehistoric Africa and featuring early humans, was replaced with a new story to fit the dinosaur theme.

The new story concerns a T. rex terrorizing modern-day Borneo, with the hero, Henry Vickers, called in to mop up the problem. It reads more like a horror story than an adventure tale, and having read Tyrannosaur before Time Safari, I always thought it seemed out of place in the book given the other two tales are much more action-oriented.

I recommend picking up Time Safari rather than Tyrannosaur, but the fact is Tyrannosaur is much easier to find than the original novel. Two-thirds of the book are left pretty much untouched, so it’s still worth the cover price.

Trivia

  • I'm pointing out the obvious here, but notice the tag line on top of the cover: "Peril in the Jurassic!" Tyrannosaurus rex lived in the Cretaceous Period, not the Jurassic. No part of the novel is set in the Jurassic, but when you have a movie called Jurassic Park in theaters, who cares about accuracy in advertising?

Reviews

  • None

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