In Search of The Lost World - Primordia 1 by Grieg Beck Book 1 of the Trilogy

 

Primordia 1 - In Search of the Lost World 👆

From the Back Cover

Ben Cartwright, former soldier, home to mourn the loss of his father stumbles upon cryptic letters from the past between the author, Arthur Conan Doyle and his great, great grandfather who vanished while exploring the Amazon jungle in 1908.

Amazingly, these letters lead Ben to believe that his ancestor’s expedition was the basis for Doyle’s fantastical tale of a lost world inhabited by long extinct creatures. As Ben digs some more he finds clues to the whereabouts of a lost notebook that might contain a map to a place that is home to creatures that would rewrite everything known about history, biology and evolution.

But other parties now know about the notebook, and will do anything to obtain it. For Ben and his friends, it becomes a race against time and against ruthless rivals.

In the remotest corners of Venezuela, along winding river trails known only to lost tribes, and through near impenetrable jungle, Ben and his novice team find a forbidden place more terrifying and dangerous than anything they could ever have imagined.

In Search of the Lost World - Primordia #1

This is the Lost World redux. 

The above statement pulls this wannabe into the big league because there cannot have been a more singular novel "The Lost World" that has fired the imagination of readers for over a century and has made creature features one of the worlds most bankable storylines whether it is in a book, on screen or as a wonderland.

Greig has put in plenty of action with a nice story arc linking this book to the original Lost world by Arthur Conan Doyle. In case you don't know about Doyle just think Sherlock Holmes and your memory should come Beck.

Having tasted and dined on dinosaurs with Michael Crichton's beautiful creations of Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna the two islands with test tube dinosaurs; Primordia coming decades after these landmark books still manages to come across as one of the better dinosaur books that I have read and I have read many. The story which has a runaway comet and which results in time becoming immaterial with an Open Sesame effect, forming a nice portal of sorts to allow for the undiscovered tract of land and its even mysterious beings.

The book is pretty much dedicated to the Titanoboa........

I tend to get lost in a book and forget verifying the information but here we have -

Titanoboa, T-Rex, Allosaurus all in the same area at the same time makes me suffer in suspended disbelief. Paleocene Epoch was when Titanoboa existed and it would have missed T-Rex by a whisker, T-Rex being from late Cretaceous in years that would be 90 to 66 million years for T-Rex vs 66 million to 56 million years for Titanoboa. The whisker being give or take a million years compared with humans, i.e. the HOMO genus being 2.8–2.75 million years. The Allosaurus is from the Jurassic period 150 million years. Paleontology lesson over. The animals are fascinating and their presence in the place was important. As a diagnosed reader of fantasy the story for me is more important than facts and this small oasis in the middle of eternity is a place for nature to let its hair down and gives some fantastic imagery to the story.

So I assumed that this world was a closed biosphere where all kinds of animals thrived in perpetuity. 

This is not Jurassic Park where a mishmash of chems and diluted soups created the hitherto extinct animals all co-habiting and inhabiting in the same timeline and same region. This book is a look at the Cretaceous but the featured animals are from all over history and from a variety of times covering the earths immense history. 

The book is made for a taut ride but somehow, somewhere and sometimes one gets a feeling that the story is too convenient and there is no fresh feel in the story when you consider the pains that the author has taken, to flesh out the correlation with the original Lost World. 

I had definitely expected better from Grieg having read a couple of his other books especially The Fossil, Siberian Incident and the first Centre of the Earth novel, all vastly superior works from the same mind. Maybe the plan for a trilogy has made this book a trifle off although to be fair to Greig the story at no pint of time loses its pace and moves like the proverbial Hollywood actioner on steroids. It is when the book sinks to the SyFy channel levels that I start getting worried although no offense to the channel, they do some nice small budget cheesy horror, thrillers. 

What I love about Grieg's writing in general is that when he thinks creatures he absolutely goes bonkers and plots some of the most convoluted creatures that one can imagine and providing a logical explanation to its existence whether terrestrial or extra....

Here the varieties of fauna are well thought out like the roaches who are my favorites from the book. Most people would get grossed out with these kind of details but I always love the blood and gore or the lack thereof having grown up on gallons of blood and gore from the Evil dead movies and the Exorcist. So bring on the gore....

Guess I would like my steak rare too...

This book delves into the What If? scenario to link with Doyle's story.

Benjamin, Ben's mother dies and while going through her papers he discovers saved correspondence between his great-great-grandfather and Doyle along with a copy of Doyle’s The Lost World along with credits for the novel to his great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Bartholomew Cartwright along with an intriguing letter written by Doyle stating that on his death, he wants Cartwright or one of his heirs to have Cartwright’s original expedition journal back. 

The outrageous story backed by the original correspondence and a dedicated signed copy of the book by A C Doyle fires Ben's imagination and a growing need to know his ancestor's final fate leads him to converse with a few childhood friends that he was meeting and suddenly with everyone charged up, the adventure begins with a search for the journal.

The journal, search and plan for the adventure takes a huge chunk of the book with many of the points in the ride being fillers. Some of the shortcuts and jumping to conclusions are too convenient and the introduction of a villainous third party is too convenient and plain run of the mill. We have seen and read so many times that it can be considered an adventure story basic template. 

Primordia 1 is an entertainer and kicking off from a classic, it still does not measure up considering the time lapse between the releases over a century but All in all a pretty good read. 

Am going after the trilogy and willing to give Greig a long rope after good reads earlier. 

Keep reading for a birds eye view of the second book in the trilogy Primordia 2 - Return to the Lost World.

Please do not forget to post your comments. I am an equal opportunity person so would love to hear your love or your hate for the review or book in any order. Please write what you did not like or whether the book was an absolute disaster for you and why.

You can also follow/like my review at Goodreads here - 

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4356608708