Robert T. Bakker-Raptor Red

This is something a bit different! With my schedule with work, school, and a 2 year old, I've decided to end daily reviews and move simply to weekly reviews. This gives us the added benefit of either reading new books or revisiting the ones I've read before. All the books I have reviewed I've done from memory and research into the author's themselves,a  trend I wish to continue. So I begin weekly reviews with something you wouldn't see in a High School or College Literature course. Robert T. Bakker's 1994 Raptor Red.

This book is interesting because Robert T. Bakker is actually a paleontologist. His nonfiction The Dinosaur Heresies goes into depth about his theories of dinosaur behavior, from habits to intelligence. Raptor Red is a similar vein. It is a work on xenofiction that in spite of advancements in paleontology is said to hold up. In this book we follow Raptor Red, a female Utahraptor just trying her best to survive in the Early Cretaceous. We follow her from the first breaths she takes out of the egg. From the death of her first mate, to a reunion with her sister, to travelling with a male consort and eventually having children of her own. The journey is wrought with peril and death. This isn't a disneyficition of dinosaurs, it's almost like reading an Attenburough documentary. Bakker uses his knowledge to transport you to Cretaceous.

The narrative is also interlaced with chapters dealing with prehistoric crocodiles, turtles, even rodents. It approaches them mechanically. Seldom applying human logic or empathy to these animals and instead focusing on the two primal instincts of all living beings. Food and the need to pass your genetic material on. For example, Raptor Red's consort has an extreme dislike or Red's sister and her chicks. It's brought up often that the consort would kill the chicks if he could to ensure his brood survives. The main conflict of the novel, if you can be said to have any, is Man vs. Nature. Red is doing what she is programmed to do, survive. Yet despite this robotic logic, Bakker pushes forward his ideas that raptors were social animals akin to wolves. There is surprising intimacy from Red towards her sister. She's very protective of her chicks, even if they are not Red's own. Even after attacking a prey foreign to them goes horribly wrong, Red risks dying by staying in a cold wintery cave beset by Dinonychus, simply to protect her. In spite of its lack of a human element this story is full of tension and bathos that will having you returning again and again.

Usually I mention why I consider a book a masterpiece. Raptor Red, while I don't think will hold a place in the canon, is a unique gem. Eschewing my usual moonlighting as an English professor, I'll just tell you this. Raptor Red deserves to be read, and if you haven't, devote an afternoon to this incredibly unique book. A cute story for you, I first read this book in High School, and when I got my wife to read it, it rekindled her love of dinosaurs and sparked an interest in prehistoric life in general. Then she stole my book. A trend that happens a lot. Maddie if you're reading this put my books back on my shelf. I remember buying her Prehistoric Life, The Definitive Visual History of Life on Earth, just so that she could read more about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. Raptor Red may not be considered high art, but you can't tell me that isn't magic.