Cover blurb
Erebus Resort, occupying a magnificent, hundred-thousand-acre valley deep in the Colorado Rockies, offers guests the experience of viewing woolly mammoths, Irish Elk, and giant ground sloths in their native habitat, brought back from extinction through the magic of genetic manipulation. When a billionaire’s son and his new wife are kidnapped and murdered in the Erebus backcountry by what is assumed to be a gang of eco-terrorists, Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Frances Cash partners with county sheriff James Colcord to track down the perpetrators.
As killings mount and the valley is evacuated, Cash and Colcord must confront an ancient, intelligent, and malevolent presence at Erebus, bent not on resurrection—but extinction.
My thoughts
Extinction by author Douglas Preston inevitably will be compared to Jurassic Park as both novels are set in private resorts populated with genetically resurrected prehistoric wildlife, although in this case, Pleistocene megafauna. But just as the idea of a park full of extinct animals didn’t originate with Preston, neither is it original to Jurassic Park, with the 1969 novel The Parasaurians being one of the earliest works of fiction to use the trope. Also, while the focus for Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton was on his dinosaurian cast, the mammoths and other extinct animals in Extinction play only a tiny role in the plot. Preston’s novel is more of a police procedural that happens to be set in a park full of resurrected wildlife, although one that slowly morphs into a horror novel as the nature of the threat is exposed.
Extinction opens with the disappearance of a young rich couple while camping in a remote corner of Erebus Resort, an exclusive mountain resort in Colorado that is home to six “de-extincted” species, including mammoths, giant sloths, and the giant rhino Paraceratherium. Frances Cash, an agent at Colorado’s equivalent of the FBI, is assigned the investigation as her first case with the agency. While at Erebus, she teams up with the local sheriff James Colcord, a military veteran who is polite but somewhat old-fashioned in his ways. The investigation quickly rules out an animal attack as the cause of the couple’s disappearance given the native predators were moved out of the park before it opened while the resurrected species have had their genes for aggression removed. The resort’s owners are eager to blame the disappearance on radical environmentalists, and Cash at first accepts this explanation. But the more Cash digs, the more it becomes apparent that Erebus is hiding something, and that the staff know more about the disappearance than they’re letting on.
Extinction is a tough novel to review without spoiling the nature of Erebus’s big secret, but don’t worry, I’m not going to break my “no spoilers” policy. I will say that I correctly guessed the nature of the threat very early in the novel, although I’m not sure if that was simply because I’ve read a lot of this type of fiction. As noted, Extinction at first plays out like a mystery novel, with Cash and Colcord spending roughly the first half searching for clues and interrogating witnesses. As the threat makes itself known, the novel ramps up the horror until everything goes spectacularly to hell in the third act. In that way, Extinction reminded me of the novel that put Preston and his frequent collaborator Lincoln Child on the map: Relic, which has a similar plot structure.
Extinction is a decent “beach read” that doesn’t set out to be much else. Like many modern mainstream thrillers, the story is told through uncomplicated prose, short chapters, and characters that are more genre stereotypes than actual people. Yet that lack of ambition is the novel’s greatest weakness. There are not many twists or real surprises in its pages, with the list of casualties easy to guess ahead of time, as victims are either the equivalent of Star Trek’s redshirts, villains, or just characters with obnoxious personalities. The novel also could have more to say about many issues it touches on, from the ethics of bringing back extinct animals to the willingness of law enforcement to scapegoat activists to protect the rich and powerful, but Preston is too timid to tackle those topics. Still, as is, it’s okay. Extinction moves at a nice pace and has some thrilling moments when the park’s secret finally comes to light. It’s not as memorable as Jurassic Park, but nonetheless entertains.
Trivia
- As noted, Preston is a long-time collaborator with Lincoln Child. The two have written more than two dozen novels together, most featuring FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast. He has also written nonfiction and solo novels, including Tyrannosaur Canyon, which I previously reviewed. Extinction is dedicated to Child, and one of their recent collaborations makes a cameo early in the novel.
- The six resurrected species in Extinction are the woolly mammoth, the Irish elk, the giant ground sloth Megatherium, the glyptodon, the giant beaver, and the Paraceratherium. And yes, as Preston himself notes, the Paraceratherium lived in the Oligocene, not the Pleistocene.
- Extinction shares another plot element with a Crichton novel. Click here only if you don’t mind spoilers.
Prehistoric Pulp 