'Dragon Teeth' by Michael Crichton
'Dragon Teeth' by Michael Crichton

The good

  • The book explores some interesting settings: the wild west of the United States, Deadwood, the Badlands, Cheyenne, etc.

  • The book also explores an interesting time period: the expansion of the US, the wars and massacres of Native Americans, and the rise in the popularity of archaeology and evolution. I found it especially interesting to imagine what it would be like to live in a time period where people went from assuming the world was a few thousand years old and always looked more or less the same, to realizing the world was millions of years old (actually, billions, but they weren’t ready to make that big of a leap yet!), and that it looked totally different in the past, with giant dinosaurs roaming the planet.

  • Some parts of the book feel like a typical fast paced and exciting Crichton novel.

The not so good

  • Some parts of the book have a different style that’s somewhere between a personal journal and a news report / documentary. I found these really broke up the flow and were not as interesting to read.

  • Most of the characters feel 2 dimensional and under-developed. Even the famous historical figures we come across in the story, such as Jack McCall (who was notorious for killing Wild Bill Hickock) and Wyatt Earp, get little more than quick cameos.

Rating: 4 stars