Customer Reviews

Raptor Red

5 star:		(99)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I wouldn't have thought what Robert Bakker has done in this book was possible! Certainly his academic work grabbed the public imagination, and his factual book "The Dinosaur Heresies" stirred up controversy with his theory that dinosaurs were actually fast, warm-blooded animals quite like modern mammals and birds. But to write a full-length novel about the day-to-day life of a dinosaur? How interesting could that be?

Well, maybe it's me - when I was a boy I used to devour the "animal books" of Jack London and Ernest Seton Thompson - but I just couldn't put "Raptor Red" down. You hear that said a lot, but this time it was literally true. Told in the present tense throughout, this story simply rips along, going from one thrilling episode to another and astonishing you with little-known but exciting facts and informed speculation.

By the way, the heroine (you have to call her that) turns out to be almost identical to the "velociraptors" in the film "Jurassic Park". (Please see the first Comment below this review for a correction of the following statements). At the time, everyone thought Steven Spielberg had contradicted all the scientific evidence by making his raptors twice as big as human beings - then in 1982, the year before the film was released, someone dug up fossils from a raptor that was almost identical to Spielberg's. That animal - christened Utahraptor - is Raptor Red, and she tangles with some scary opposition along the way. You wouldn't think there would be much that could threaten a fast-moving 500-pound monster with razor-sharp claws and teeth... until page 16, anyway.

Bakker is a born writer, and not only does he keep the action humming along, he even finds time for a lot more character development than you will find in many novels about people. Within a few pages you will find yourself identifying with Raptor Red, urging her on as she stalks prey, holding your breath when she is in danger, even sighing when she finds a mate. Then you pinch yourself and remember that she'd have YOU for dinner in about half of no time at all.

The key lies in Bakker's belief that some dinosaurs - certainly utahraptors - were highly intelligent, perhaps as much so as wolves and bears, or even the great apes. That opens up a whole new dimension that most renderings of the prehistoric world have utterly lacked.

Although it's a compact and inexpensive paperback, "Raptor Red" has been carefully produced, with considerable attention to detail. Starting with the holographic portrait of Raptor Red herself on the cover - it's corny, but I liked it. Every one of the 26 chapters begins with a little thumbnail drawing of a type of dinosaur mentioned in the story. And Bakker has written an interesting and instructive preface and epilogue, to explain some facts he couldn't reasonably fit into the book itself.

If you are in the least interested in dinosaurs, or animals of any kind - read it! You can't go wrong.

Not everyone can write a book about a dinosaur from the dinosaur's point of view and get away with it. In fact, few have ever tried. Bakker succeeds in this undertaking for several reasons, not the least of which is because he really knows his science. The last time I read a book of this kind, in which the author attempted to evoke the life experience of another animal from the animal's point of view, was when I read Gordon Allred's great little book "Dori, the Mallard" way back in the late 60's. He's the only guy I ever knew who could describe what it was like to be a duck from the duck's point of view. Bakker's book is equally compelling.

The second reason this book works is because it resonates with a rare kind of credibility. No one really knows if Raptor Red or any other raptor was really sentient, nor does anyone really know whether the abstract ideas Bakker posits for her were actually part of her way of intepreting her life experience. No one knows because we simply can't know such things, but the very notion of it is compelling for those who have witnessed sentience in other species in our own life experiences.

The physical attributes he attributes to her, such as the size of her brain relative to her overall mass and structure, is reasonable. The conclusion he draws, that she was unusually intelligent because she possessed a big enough brain to sustain thoughtful sentience, is a product of reasonable scientific extension of known facts. The keenness he attributes to her olfactory and visual senses is acceptable because it is based on sound scientific information that is universally known and widely accepted. Her ability to reason, solve problems, recall past experiences in the context of current challenges, discriminate between one cultural norm and another, interpret scent messages, and so on, are all attributes commonly demonstrated by other highly evolved, warm-blooded creatures living in our own time. The question he asks is a reasonable one - if we find these characteristics in sentient creatures of our own time, why couldn't they have existed in times long gone by? And if they did, what was it like to experience the world of their time from their point of view?

It is Bakker's erudite and imaginative ability to explore the possible answers to these questions, without lapsing into our peculiar brand of twentieth century Disneyfication, that makes this a meaningful and valuable book. Bakker is a rare find - in the world of laudatory science fiction there are very few authors who could have made this book work. For this reason alone, if there were no other reasons, I would recommend this book to others without qualification.

Finally, I found this book not only well written in terms of its science but as a story told from the first person's point of view. It is well paced, liberally laced with explanatory science which informs without boring or overwhelming the reader. When Bakker makes a leap of faith not shared by others in his profession, he justifies his point of view by informing our own critical thinking without becoming argumentative. This is an unusually entertaining and informing book which I heartily recommend to others.

Using fiction to expand the audience for a scientific idea is a novel ploy. Robert Bakker has given us one of the best examples of this technique. In The Dinosaur Heresies, Bakker presented a beautifully written, but highly detailed, account of the likely scenarios of dinosaur existence. The full range of dinosaur life was described with elegant care, overlaid with Bakker's fine wit. But the wealth of information in that book may have deterred some readers from delving into what was basically a serious description. Here, Bakker's simply dumped much of the scientific annotation to provide a similar depiction of dinosaur life.

Raptor Red incorporates a recent find of a large predatory dinosaur. Having positioned the find with its cognomen, Utahraptor, Bakker weaves a highly plausible tale of likely events in this creature's life. Cleverly portraying Raptor Red as female, he gives the "character" a wider range of experiences. Most of these are fully credible based on the increased knowledge gained by teams of paleontologists and volunteers. For example, recent finds indicate dinosaurs, unlike most of today's reptiles, probably stayed with nestlings after the hatch. Bakker has done a credible job in working in this concept and other revisionist thinking about probable dinosaur behaviour.

We must be careful in assessing whether Bakker has taken liberties with levels of dinosaur intelligence. Science has revealed unexpected mental capacity in the minute fruit fly [see Jonathan Weiner's Time, Love, Memory for a fascinating account]. Dinosaurs reigned over the planet for over 150 million years. That's a fine testimonial to their adaptability and capacity for survival. Bakker acknowledges this aptitude at the story's opening by introducing the raptor as a migratory species entering a new territory. From this beginning he goes on to give the raptor emotional capacity, environmental awareness, and almost love. While flirting lightly with anthropomorphism, Bakker deftly maintains the creature's reptilian identity. It's a fine line, but he manages it without granting the animal more intellect than it deserves. He must find a way to impart motivation and without some means of doing so, we wouldn't have had the story. And it's a fine story.

A toothy tale

Raptor Red By Robert T. Bakker is drama with a little bit of romance about the life of a female Utahraptor who lived 120,000,000 years ago named Raptor Red. The book starts out when Red's soon to be mate is killed in a fatal hunting accident. Now Raptor Red must fight for survival in pre historic Utah. She quickly joins up with her sister's new family, and together they try to find a safe home. At the same time, Red must obey natures command to pass on her genes by finding another mate. When she is approached by an attractive (meaning by raptor standards) young male she is torn in between two loyalties, one to her sister and her chicks, and the other to produce chicks of her own. This book portrays raptors as incredibly smart and effective creatures, a little smarter than a chimpanzees. I think that they are portrayed a little too smart because in several scenes Red thinks things more comlplex than most humans do. For example, when red is being chased by an Astrosaur, one of her sister's chicks is wading in the water watching the two. When Red notices a see monster about to attack the chick, she runs by the chick, knocks her out of the way, and instead the Astrosaur is grabbed and killed by the sea creature
The book is extremely well written, The writer has a well informed view on the topic since he himself is a archeologist. One of it's main faults though, is that many things go unexplained, or it will suddenly jump 2 months into the future. This is a book that would be enjoyed by all types of readers, and even non-readers.
By RJ McGirr

When Jurrasic Park hit the theaters, it stunned and excited the moviegoing public. The tyrannasaurous rex, the most popular dinosaur, was depicted as a dangerous and ferocious animal, unstoppable and invincible. But the real star of the movie wasn't the T-Rex. For his movie, Steven Spielberg introduced an even more terrifying and ferocious dinosaur, the velociraptor. The velociraptor gave Jurrasic park the real momentum it needed to soar to the top, becoming a huge hit. What some people don't know is that Spielberg made the velociraptor much bigger than it was in reality. This departure from realism worried some working on the movie, until an amazing discovery was made. The first fossil of a giant raptor was found while the movie was being filmed. Paleontoligists named it Utahraptor. This is the remarkable species of predators that this equally remarkable book is about. Robert Bakker's book, Raptor Red, has been compared to Jurrasic Park. However, I disagree with that comparison. While Jurrasic Park focuses more on the science and the desperate struggle to survive against superior predators, Raptor Red gives us a look into the mind of a female Utahraptor. It shows the reader what Utahraptor society was probably like, by analyzing the behavior of wolves and eagles. It shows us how the Utahraptors hunted in groups. And it also shows us how intelligent, cunning, and efficient these amazing superpredators were. The book begins with a thrilling account of a Utahraptor hunting expedition, which draws the reader in and refuses to let go. When Red rejoins her sister, the complexity of Utahraptor society is shown beautifully. I'm sure every reader will enjoy Raptor Red's intelligence, ingenuity, and inquisitivness as she explores her world, fighting off larger and more powerful allocanthosaurus and smaller but more numerous dynonychs. With the unique blend of action and information, this book will capture any reader from the first page, and hold on to them, not just to the last page, but beyond. Even after having reading it twice, one cannot expierience any boredom. I highly recommend this book to everyone. You don't have to be dinosaur fan to enjoy such a good book.

Robert Bakker's "Raptor Red" is unlike most dinosaur fiction because it is told from the point of a Female Utahraptor, a concept unusual for books of this type. When I first heard of this, I thought the idea sounded strange and I didn't want to read a book filled with "Hungry, must kill something!" however I relented based on the great reviewer rating here, and the fact that Bakker was a consultant for the raptors in Jurassic Park, so he must know what he's talking about.

I was pleased that I did decide to read the book because while it was unsual, I did enjoy it. Bakker takes us through what he imagines the life of a raptor must have been like. We follow Raptor Red through her life, which is filled with much more than killing and eating. The life of Raptor Red, as viewed by Bakker, could almost be the life of any of us. She experiences pain and loss, family conflict, romance, and love.

As I said, I certainly found many of the concepts presented in this story interesting, however I have to wonder how Bakker came up with his research on Raptors. Not being a paleontologist, I don't know much about what is accepted scientific fact and what he just completely makes up or is based on conjecture. I find many of the events in the story inplausible, such as the part where Raptor Red and her family basicaly go sledding down a snow-covered hill. I almost expected them to break out into a snowball fight at any minute. To believe in Bakker's concepts definitely takes a strong consideration that either we know nothing about animal behavior, or that Raptors were quite possibly one of the smartest animals to ever live.

Overall, Bakker provides a very thought-provoking story that really changed my outlook on Dinosaurs from the view of ferocious cold-blooded predators that spent vtheir lives hunting and killing. He also fills in the story with excerpts that give the reader a look into several other animals of the era such as an Aegialodon and a Pterodactyl that likes playing jokes on the Raptors. Although many of these ideas sound ridiculous, they work in the story and it comes off as a serious look at what a raptor's life "could" have been like, rather than a Disney story filled with talking animals who cook and drive cars. I defintely recommend this book if you are interested in looking at a radically new view of dinosaur life.

A maverick luminary in the paleontology field, Dr. Robert Bakker is probably best known to the layman as the uncredited dinosaur consultant on Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park." Among his peers, Bakker is considered somewhat of an erratic genius and, though his ideas concerning homeothermic biology for dinosaurs and the relationship of dinosaurs to present-day birds are largely accepted, he has hundreds of others that are still at the fringes of mainstream paleontological thought.

With RAPTOR RED, Bakker has tried his hand at dramatizing his theories, and as an exercise in speculative ecology, the book succeeds marvelously, creating the feel of a wildlife documentary snatched from the Cretaceous. When it fails, however, it fails because Bakker is not, primarily, a fiction writer, and his weaknesses concerning dynamic plot (not to mention his predilection for overly anthropomorphizing his animal characters) are sometimes all too obvious.

That said, RAPTOR RED is an engaging work that, despite a few potholes along the way, will keep the reader up late at least one night, flipping pages to find out what twist of ecological drama will crop up next.

This title "Raptor Red" depicts the life of a female velociraptor at the decline of the dinosaur society. Raptors have been described as the most efficient hunters of the dinosaur community, and is a perfect subject for a novel. Bakker uses colorful imagery words to paint a lush picture that helps feed the storyline. It begins with tragedy, and follows the "Raptor Red" through trials and tribulations that show the complexity of Bakker's theories of dinosaurs. Bakker expresses "Raptor Red's" luck many times, with stories within themselves. This book is an excellent chance for readers to excape the modern world and enter a time that leaves your imagination to paint the pictures. I suggest this book to anyone who is interested in a ficticous stories with excellent storylines. If you love to use your imagination, you will love to read this book.

This book surprised me in a good way. I was familiar with Bakker's reputation as a palaeontolgist so I knew the information would be scientifically sound but I was worried it would either be too dry and factual to be interesting or be too over-dramatised. In fact, Bakker's background gives a wonderful richness to the Cretaceous environment without detracting from the main storyline.

The main character is a carnivorous dinosaur known as 'Raptor Red'. Raptor Red and her mate have just migrated into new territory when her mate is accidentally killed. It's slow to start but the book really hits its stride when she reunites with her sister and they deal with the challenges of their environment together. It is clear that Bakker has gone to lengths to make sure these are not just human characters in dinosaur skins - they behave like real animals. They have their own distinct personalities and give the feeling that this is a written documentary following a real pack rather than a fictional reconstruction of an animal that we have never had the opportunity to observe directly. I love Raptor Red's curiosity and playfulness and her relationships with the other Utahraptors. Anybody who's interested in dinosaurs should definitely read this.

Y'know, dinosaurs do not get enough credit! I believe that this book was written during the glory days of "Jurrassic Park", but offers a different and clever alternative as it takes us back through the eons to a female raptor and her family.

Rather than boring us with the typical sci-fi twist, this story plays as rather a drama, a quiet and surprisingly personal look at a family that happens to be dinosaurs. Don't worry--it doesn't do the obnoxious anthromorph bit and turn them all into talking beasts, but the author still manages to let you into Raptor Red's head with a story that is delightfully more character-based than plot-.

One of the best aspects of this book is the gorgeous writing, full of sumptious detail that captures the spirit, if not necessarily uknown science, of this period of time.

It's a haunting, beautifully written book with some of the best animal characters ever seen.