... the view closing into a tunnel of shock around the gaping mouth of the venator, still drawing back, back, legs splayed, all his muscles tensing like steel bands beneath his gleaming skin. The sun caught the animal’s eyes like twin arcs on a welding torch; he lowered his head and the eyes became pits of night. [p. 176]
Photographer Anthony Belzoni is down on his luck: it's 1947, he's estranged from his wife, and he and his teenaged son Peter are living in a run-down apartment in Brooklyn. Then the National Geographic commissions him to work with the owners of Circus Lothar, the last dinosaur circus. For this is a world in which Conan Doyle's The Lost World was fact, not fiction: dinosaurs were found on El Grande, an isolated mesa in South America, and have become almost mundane. But the dinosaurs aren't easy to keep in captivity, and there have been some spectacular disasters, such as a venator (a savage carnivore) getting loose at a circus in Havana and killing twenty people. The public is tired of 'dino disasters', and the owners of Circus Lothar, facing bankruptcy, have decided to return their remaining animals to El Grande. The expedition includes a number of real-life characters, including a youthful Ray Harryhausen (who, in his non-fictional persona, described Dinosaur Summer as “a vicarious and wonderful adventure into the unknown wilds of the Amazon”): Belzoni and his son join the expedition, and Peter learns a lot about courage, manhood and dinosaur biology.
This is very much a boys' own adventure, and not only because it's apparently aimed at young adults. (I did not know this when I bought it, and didn't find it juvenile in style or content.) Peter is of an age to fall in love (or something like it) with every female he encounters -- not that there are many, apart from the fearsome Catalina Mendez (representing the Venezuelan Office of Natural Resources) and an elderly ankylosaur named Sheila. The novel focuses on the bond between Belzoni and Peter, and Peter's growing independence: by the epilogue, he's reconciled with his absent mother, but keenly aware that she doesn't understand him or his father. Women, eh?
As a dinosaur adventure it's pretty good. Bear avoids the usual species -- tyrannosaurs, velociraptors, et cetera -- and features lesser-known dinosaurs such as the venator and the centrosaur. There's some interesting speculation about the progress of evolution on El Grande, and the fearsome 'death eagles' which may be bringing the age of the Lost World dinosaurs to a close. Bear also addresses the colonial legacy of Conan Doyle and his fictional Professor Challenger. Dagger, the fearsome venator, is identified as a Challenger by Billie, a Makritare Indian river guide. "You mean like the Professor," says one member of the expedition. "No," says Billie. "He is the one who challenges. He asks questions only ghosts can answer." Though Billie's spiritual quest isn't explored in detail, it's a good counterweight to the concerns of the expedition and of the Venezuelan military.
I enjoyed this much more than Crichton's The Lost World -- Bear was an excellent writer -- but I'm still looking for a really good novel about dinosaurs.
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