Dragon Teeth: A Novel - Michael Crichton Audiobook

Written by Michael Crichton
Read by Scott Brick
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: HarperCollins
File size: 221203 KB
Release date: May 23, 2017
Duration: 07:40:50

Crichton pays homage, again, to Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World in this entertaining historical thriller whose manuscript was discovered posthumously—a thrilling adventure set in the Wild West during the golden age of fossil hunting.

The year is 1876. Warring Indian tribes still populate America’s western territories even as lawless gold-rush towns begin to mark the landscape. In much of the country it is still illegal to espouse evolution. Against this backdrop two monomaniacal paleontologists pillage the Wild West, hunting for dinosaur fossils, while surveilling, deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars.

Into this treacherous territory plunges the arrogant and entitled William Johnson, a Yale student with more privilege than sense. Determined to survive a summer in the west to win a bet against his archrival, William has joined world-renowned paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh on his latest expedition. But when the paranoid and secretive Marsh becomes convinced that William is spying for his nemesis, Edwin Drinker Cope, he abandons him in Cheyenne, Wyoming, a locus of crime and vice. William is forced to join forces with Cope and soon stumbles upon a discovery of historic proportions. With this extraordinary treasure, however, comes exceptional danger, and William’s newfound resilience will be tested in his struggle to protect his cache, which pits him against some of the West’s most notorious characters.

Drawing on both meticulously researched history and an exuberant imagination, Dragon Teeth is based on the rivalry between real-life paleontologists Cope and Marsh. In William Johnson readers will find an inspiring hero only Michael Crichton could have imagined. Perfectly paced and brilliantly plotted, this enormously winning adventure is destined to become another Crichton classic.

Crichton’s widow Sherri reads her postscript at the end, providing the context for the creation of Crichton’s novel. Despite the shortcomings of the story, the audiobook will please die-hard fans of the author.

Scott Brick is a narrator at the top of his game, and this is a meaty tale for him to get his–well, teeth–into. It’s told from the point of view of William Johnson, a spoiled, privileged Yale student who is forced to fend for himself and guard Cope’s finds in a lawless gold-rush town after he is the sole survivor of an Indian attack. There’s action aplenty, but the narrative develops at a steady pace rather than the unable-to-put-downable pace of better-known Crichton titles. But it’s still a compelling listen–and one that will leave the listener feeling pleasantly educated as well as entertained. C.A.T. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine