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A review by erfenden
Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker
4.0
Raptor Red is, at its heart, a romance story about a widow trapped between her desire for a younger suitor and her devotion to her sister. The widow just happens to be a raptor.
The back of the book has a line from People magazine making the inevitable comparison to Jurassic Park, which had come out a few years earlier. It suggests that Robert Bakker is a more daring author and Michael Crichton as this book is written from the alien perspective of a dinosaur protaginist.
He may be daring but Bakker is not the author that Crichton is.
While the writing is not Crichton-level good, it is a decent, entertaining story.
As far as the non-human perspective goes, I think Bakker captured it awkwardly. He spends a great deal of time describing the mechanics of raptor musculature, the heat exchange of blood vessels in dinosaur legs, etc. Character motivations are constantly broken down into instincts described in programming terms. It feels very scholarly and mechanical, which detracts from any feeling of immersion I might have as the reader.
That is to say, I'm less interested in know /how/ the raptor stalks its prey, I want to know what it /feels/ like to be a raptor stalking its prey.
I had fun with Raptor Red but I'm unlikely to read it again or recommend it to anyone.
The back of the book has a line from People magazine making the inevitable comparison to Jurassic Park, which had come out a few years earlier. It suggests that Robert Bakker is a more daring author and Michael Crichton as this book is written from the alien perspective of a dinosaur protaginist.
He may be daring but Bakker is not the author that Crichton is.
While the writing is not Crichton-level good, it is a decent, entertaining story.
As far as the non-human perspective goes, I think Bakker captured it awkwardly. He spends a great deal of time describing the mechanics of raptor musculature, the heat exchange of blood vessels in dinosaur legs, etc. Character motivations are constantly broken down into instincts described in programming terms. It feels very scholarly and mechanical, which detracts from any feeling of immersion I might have as the reader.
That is to say, I'm less interested in know /how/ the raptor stalks its prey, I want to know what it /feels/ like to be a raptor stalking its prey.
I had fun with Raptor Red but I'm unlikely to read it again or recommend it to anyone.