Tyrannosaur Canyon

136641Sometimes, the best way to judge a book is by its cover. I know people say not to and that it’s a bad thing, and I’m willing to grant that in the metaphorical cases of the phrase, that might have universal merit. It probably doesn’t, because some peoples’ covers are pretty much exactly as advertised. But it might. For actual books, however, that advice is completely insane. Sure, feel free to use other measuring sticks as well, but some good old-fashioned cover-judging is how you end up with books like Tyrannosaur Canyon. Right there on the cover, you have a tyrannosaur-head fossil, as well as a blurb that is being voiced in your head by the “In a World…” movie preview guy, explaining all about the mysterious missing moon rock, the fossil prospector, the evil paleontologist, and all the rest of the characters rounding out this airport thriller that promises (still on the cover, mind you) to be at least twice as good as anything by Michael Crichton.

As for how good it actually was? Well, honestly, probably not as good as Jurassic Park, what with JP having actual dinosaurs and all versus plain-jane fossils and kidnappings and manhunts through canyons and government black ops conspiracies. I mean, all of that stuff is cool, and makes for an exciting read. But it’s no chased by dinosaurs and unix hacking, now is it? Definitely better than The Da Vinci Code, in that the prose is substantially more thoughtful and not nearly as overwrought, and not incidentally because of Tyrannosaur Canyon‘s lack of monastic self-flagellation. (Not to be confused with its lack of monks, as that would be counterfactual. Don’t believe me? Just check the cover.)

4 thoughts on “Tyrannosaur Canyon

  1. Anne

    I love that you read this book. So, worse than jurassic park and better than the da vinci code? That sounds like a promising beginning to a new rating scale for a certain kind of airport book.

  2. Chris Post author

    It was completely worth the $2 and airport time. (As opposed to Anita Blake #12, which is so far almost entirely awful. I’m so glad I replaced the copy I left in the Mav-Mobile!)

    I’m thinking Jurassic Park has got to be the high watermark of the genre, right? 10 Grishams, understanding that any random Grisham novel, as the baseline, is a solid 5. TC probably rates 6, 6.5 Grishams. DVC rates 3, I wanna say, but easily 6 when read by that one guy.

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