Book Review (Fiction): Dragon Teeth

Dragon Teeth

Michael Crichton

HarperCollins Publishers 2017                                            295 Pages

The late, great SF maestro Arthur C Clarke once postulated that many extinct species could possibly be resurrected - once  the science of genetics had advanced enough.

Michael Crichton took that idea forward with his novel Jurassic Park, later filmed by Steven Spielberg. In Dragon Teeth, his posthumous “other dinosaur novel” Crichton takes a look backwards at the early days of palaeontology in 19^th century America. From beginnings in England where certain fossil remains were first recognized as the remains of a long extinct order of giant reptilian creatures, the focus of hunting for dinosaurs had shifted from Europe to North America by 1870.

This scientific effort was fuelled, in part, by the bitter rivalry between feuding real-life Professors Edward Drinker Cope, University of Pennsylvania, and Othniel Charles Marsh (of Yale). Their fanatically aggressive drive to outdo each other in the discovery of new dinosaur species led to what was called “the bone wars” and “the great dinosaur rush” of the 1800s that paralleled the contemporaneous gold rush in the American West. Crichton has actually downplayed the lengths these two would go to, to lash out at each other - as he felt the truth was far too excessive to be plausible!

Caught between these rivals is the fictitious William Jason Tertullius Johnson; the spoiled elder son of a wealthy Philadelphia shipbuilder studying at Yale. An unfriendly wager that the sheltered and privileged Johnson wouldn’t be able to rough it out on America’s wild lawless frontier goads him into joining Professor Marsh’s latest fossil hunting expedition. Armed with some hastily-acquired photography skills, William Johnson sets out by train with Marsh’s party for Colorado in 1876.

Unfortunately, the unscrupulous and paranoid Marsh, convinced that Johnson is one of Cope’s spies out to steal his discoveries, abandons the entitled brat in Wyoming en route. Ironically, Professor Cope, also on his way west on a separate expedition, then comes across Johnson and offers him a position as a photographer. Dragon Teeth chronicles Johnson’s brutal coming-of-age in a very fraught old west that hardens him, while stripping him of all privileges and comforts.

Part historical novel and part action-adventure travelogue through the badlands of Wyoming and Montana, Dragon Teeth also takes in the US Army’s war against the Sioux and Crow and the gold rush in the Black Hills. Real-life figures such as Wyatt Earp and Robert Louis Stevenson also make appearances.

Despite his record as a writer of numerous bestsellers, the late Michael Crichton (1942-2008) was no master wordsmith. Great at spotting trends and generating ideas, he wasn't so hot at expressing these stylishly. His prose style was pedestrian, at best. Characterization and conversations were the weakest part of his oeuvre; Crichton’s characters tend to be flat and one-dimensional and their speech often a mere vehicle for exposition. The impressive research he conducted – as evident in the extensive bibliography at the end of this novel – frequently slows down the narrative with exposition in “info dumps”.

Alas, Dragon Teeth has all these weaknesses in full. The problems with this novel are compounded by it being a draft extracted from the late author’s word processor and completed by his widow, using his notes. As a result, there are significant gaps in the timeline and a rushed, compressed quality in sections of the narrative.  

A pity really, this novel had all the potential of being  a rip-roaring historical adventure in the mode of George MacDonald Fraser’s far better Flashman And The Redskins.