Brief Book Review: Primordia - Search for The Lost World · 6:00pm May 1st, 2018
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, "The Lost World", is often regarded as one of the original prehistoric adventure stories. The premise is fairly straight forward, with an expedition to a lost plateau were prehistoric animals and ancient people still reside by the brash Professor Challenger and his company. The story had been adapted numerous times, helped by the fact it's in the public domain. It and its 1925 film adaptation, in which a Brontosaurus rampages briefly in London, directly inspired the likes of King Kong, Godzilla, and Jurassic Park. Michael Crichton even titled the sequel to his dinosaur novel after the Doyle book as a tribute.
One interesting spin-off was the book, "Dinosaur Summer" by Greg Bear, which had the premise of the Conan Doyle novel really happening and the dinosaurs became public knowledge. One thing leads to another and a group of people including Ray Harryhausen end up on the plateau.
This is where "Primordia" comes in-
The premise of "Primordia" is that a retired soldier returns home to find his family's old keepsakes. He discovers a chest of letters belonging to his great-great-grandfather who went missing in 1908. It turns out his ancestor was a close friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and wrote to him about his adventures, namely his final 1908 expedition into the Central American rain forests to look for a legendary plateau that only seems to be present in the rainy season every 10 years. When he went missing, Doyle kept his notes safe and wrote the story, The Lost World, based off his lost friend's adventure as a tribute whilst holding onto the notes for the family to claim them. One thing leads to another and our protagonist saddles up with their friends to both find the hidden notes at Doyle's estate 110 years later, while the very unscrupulous descendant of another member of the 1908 expedition catches on and tries to find The Lost World as well.
The premise is great and the writing is good, with the author clearly researching prehistoric animals to figure out how things would behave and work for the most part. You get a decent variety from giant insects to a few dinosaurs to enormous snakes, much like how the original novel used both ice age mammals, terror birds, and dinosaurs.
Spoiler warnings ahead, but the one big problem I had with the story was pacing. Namely the first half of the story has an extremely slow pace and the back half has such a quick one it seems almost rushed. The explorers take half the novel just getting to Central America and by the time they get to the plateau, everyone starts dropping like flies. I don't have a big problem with killing off characters, even likeable ones, but the rapid-fire death rate leaves very little time for grieving or attachment. Just as we might try to mourn the loss of one likable character, another one dies.
To grant an idea, within the first hour of being on the plateau, an expedition of just under a dozen characters is effectively cut down to half. By the second day's end, all but two characters are dead. And while some of the deaths can be delightfully original and show the brutality of nature, like a horde of carnivorous bugs or a skin burrowing parasite going right through someone's brain; others are so quick they seem tacked on. Two characters effectively die off-screen.
There is hardly any time to explore much of the Lost World because everyone is dying so quickly. One especially egregious example is one of the unscrupulous rival expedition which is forced to team up with the core cast is directly responsible for almost half of the fatalities and yet no one catches on. Not even after the Token Good Teammate of the 'bad guys' who effectively befriends the protagonist directly tells him "I wouldn't put my back to that guy". Spoiler warning, "that guy" knifes TGT through the neck... for no reason whatsoever. Yes he spouts out "chose the wrong team" but that's bunk because their employer had been killed by then and everyone agreed safety in numbers. And yet when this psychopath comes running out of the forest screaming vaguely about how "something" killed the TGT, no one suspects a thing. And his death? Completely unsatisfying as after this psychopath who broke someone's ankle so she'd be killed by pursuing predators, stood by and let another get eaten by a giant snake to sate its hunger, let another guy get eaten by an aquatic predator for the same reason, knifed his own teammate, and then tried to kill the rest of the group to save his own hide.
Instead, the bastard gets knocked over the side of the cliff alongside a character we actually like by an oblivious big snake. Come on Greg Beck, you gave me death by brain-burrower earlier! You can do better than this! Come oooon there was a big snake right there we couldn't have the bastard get slowly constricted to death?
I am impressed at the creatures used for the story, however I feel that as a side effect of how the latter half feels crammed that it cut down on diversity. We do get some dinosaurs, but they largely play bit roles and background notice. The only ones with a good sized appearance are a horde of wolf-sized carnivores that go unidentified but are likely some kind of Coleurosaur. However after one chase scene and one largely offscreen death, they're out of the picture. Instead the meat of the focus goes to the Titanoboa, an enormous snake up to 60 feet long. This is a mixed choice for me. On one hand I love the use of a lesser known prehistoric animal and an Anaconda the length of a school bus is terrifying! On the other hand I feel they are marginally overused. Of the animal caused fatalities in the story, the Titanoboas are responsible for about half of them.
I also feel the story does slightly exaggerate their ability, but more by playing other animals down than playing it up. It repeatedly calls it an "Apex-Apex predator", it's implied they out-competed large Theropods, and is presented as virtually invincible as it hunts dinosaurs and man alike. While the story does very correctly note Titanoboa lived after the dinosaurs, it does stumble slightly when it says it survived the extinction of the Cretaceous. While giant snakes did exist in the Mesozoic, namely gigantic sea-snakes like Palaeophis, Titanoboa was strictly after the dinosaurs' time. This isn't a big gripe mind you, as I applaud the attention to accuracy and the implication some snakes ever so often escaped the plateau and are responsible for legends of giant snakes in the rain forest is cool. As well as, again, using something distinct as an apex predator instead of the usual Tyrannosaurus; I just feel if one is going to be accurate they should go the whole nine yards and not slip up on such a distinct detail that's so easily fixed. Call it a pet peeve.
Still the story is good, writing is talented, premise is great and it does a good job of explaining its own rules by justifying plot elements; which is something I think almost all science fiction or fantasy authors should do. Why has satellite imagery never found the plateau? How did they find a way up it? Why do the natives not live their? Why can't someone just fly there? How did the animals up top not repopulate and spread over the earth? How can so many large animals live in such a small space? All justified and great props to the author for doing that.
3.5/5
Assessment:
Good condition, partially snake chewed
Interesting... Not quite sure if I'd be tempted to seek out that book for myself, but I did find it interesting to read about here.
And I'm pleased you mentioned Dinosaur Summer, that was a damn good book in my opinion.
Hmm admittedly I have not read the original Lost World novel or Dinosaur Summer... Think I should check those out eventually.
Sounds like a good triumvirate of summer reading.