Extinction

A Fun, Light Read

What makes a book compelling? Join me in reading good books and honing the craft of writing.

Sometimes, you don’t want the complex mishmash of flavors in Elote, aka Street Corn, a delicious concoction of grilled corn, cotija, lime juice and spices. Sometimes, you want popcorn. Especially after a slew of deep reads. Helps clear the mind, provides variety.

Douglas Preston's Extinction is a Jurassic Park kind of story, with a private park (for paying guests only) of reconstituted, formerly extinct animals, such as the cute but aptly named mammoths. As the story opens, take a field trip with some of the characters and observe the wildlife:

…It took her a moment to locate the woolly mammoths, four big ones and two smaller ones, on the opposite shore. She touched up the focus [of the binoculars], and the animals sprang into sharp relief. It took her breath away. They were so gigantic they looked almost fake—much bigger than the elephants she’d seen on safari in Africa. The bull was drinking deeply. He was at fifteen feet at the shoulder, his tusks great scimitars of ivory as long again as his body, sweeping outward from a shaggy domed head. The matriarch of the family was standing guard, her trunk elevated and moving back and forth, warily testing the air, as her calf huddled under her protective bulk, pushing his head upward to suckle… It was early fall, but here in the mountains, the mammoths were already growing out their winter coats, the long brown hair hanging down several feet.

Not your city zoo, is it? Preston sets the stage for our adventure.

Note how Preston opens in a different manner than some of the other books we’ve reviewed. For example, in The Trackers, Charles Frazier opens with the mural painter seeing his host’s Wyoming ranch house for the first time, as a painter would: Down the dirt drive, two black arcs of telephone and electric lines drooped pole to pole; the house had angular flattish rooflines looking like Frank Lloyd Wright’s work. The painter knocks on the door, gets no response and goes over to a corral, where a cowboy, Faro, we later learn, is working with a horse. The painter, from the East, is far far out of his element in Wyoming amongst real cowboys.

Preston, a seasoned author who frequently partners with Lincoln Child, doesn’t bother with introducing characters via their foibles, their problems. He gets right to the action. Don’t get attached to the woman, Olivia, a newlywed. She doesn’t stick around long, is the appetizer for the real story, involving a mysterious group who escalate their killings. Agent Cash is called in to work the case and find the perps, leading us through her investigations both in the field and elsewhere. The question of extinction turns on its head: in a park where the extinct is resurrected, are the perps trying to make certain people extinct?

Best read wherever you’re not running to stay alive.

All the Best,

Geoff

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