My first dinosaur book of the year was this ripper from Greig Beck. Primordia takes inspiration from Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous novel The Lost World. In this book, we follow Ben Cartwright and his friends as they try to locate a hidden plateau located deep within the Amazon jungle thought to be home to dinosaurs. This is a place that is only accessible once every ten years. Does the place really exist? Are there really dinosaurs still roaming the Earth? And what is causing all of the interference with the telecommunications equipment?
Primordia is definitely one of the best dinosaur books I have read in some time. Whilst the first half of the book reads like Nicolas Cage’s National Treasure, entailing a game of cat and mouse as they search to locate Cartwright’s grandfather’s journal, the second half ramps up the action as Cartwright and his naive friends embark upon their quest to discover the plateau. Ben Cartwright is a very solid character. He’s likeable and not overly macho, considering his past as a soldier. His friends that accompany him are largely fodder, destined to become food, often perishing in gruesome circumstances. Cartwright isn’t the only one interested in locating the plateau. A group of mercenaries funded by the deplorable Mr Barlow also follows the trail and add more problems and conflict to a situation that rapidly descends into a fight for survival!
Primordia does exactly what I want a dinosaur book to do; it adds adventure, gruesome deaths, excitement, dinosaurs, brain-eating bugs, giant snakes and guns, creating a cocktail of prehistoric cool. I read through this pretty quickly. It is well-paced and I am definitely up for a sequel please Mr Beck.
4/5 man-eating cockroaches from the Grim Reader.
Pick up a copy from here.
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