words in scarlet ink

Dragon Teeth is the first of Michael Crichton’s novels that I’ve read. You’d think I’d have read Jurassic Park, as it’s one of my all time favorite films, but no, I never have. I was originally going to listen to Jurassic Park, but it was on loan, and this came up as available.

I wanted to be a paleontologist as a kid. I was obsessed with dinosaur bones and knew an abnormal amount about them for a four to nine year old child. I still have tons of books about them and am still fairly obsessed all things considered. I don’t know why I didn’t follow that dream. It’s one of the things about my life that I really regret.

So this book called to me. It was my second historical fiction book in a row, but not on purpose.

This story follows William Johnson, a college student who gets involved in the rivalry between two men searching for dinosaur bones in the American West during the 1870s on a bet with another student. The ‘Bone Wars‘ as they were called, was a real rivalry between Othenial Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, both of whom are fictionalized and play prominent roles in this story.

Johnson becomes an assistant to first Marsh, who is portrayed as a paranoid lunatic, and Marsh eventually abandons Johnson (a student!) in Cheyenne when he suspects he’s a spy for Cope. Johnson then actually joins up with Cope. They head out west, and make it, in spite of Marsh doing everything in his power to discredit them. News of Custer’s defeat by Sitting Bull at the Battle of Little Bighorn means travel to Montana is banned, but Cope’s group sneaks in and start digging up dinosaur bones.

On their journey back, the group is attacked by the Sioux and are separated, and Johnson is missing and presumed dead. Cope wires his parents and the remaining team leaves for the east coast. Johnson manages to drag himself, injured, to Deadwood Gulch, and the rest of the story is his journey to get home and what happens to the dinosaur bones in his possession.

This book was actually really funny. I listened to a lot of it at the gym, and it was wildly hilarious. Marsh is a lunatic and Cope isn’t much better but is at least not also paranoid, and Johnson kind of can’t believe how in over his head he is. I will have to check out more of Crichton’s books in the future.

It was fun. Everything I wanted in a story about the search for dinosaur bones in 1876. Made me regret not becoming a paleontologist again.