Title: The Paleontologist

Author: Luke Dumas

Release date: October 31st, 2023

If you follow any of my social media pages, you’ll know that I’m the father of a son who is dinosaur obsessed. While many parents deal with a dinosaur ‘phase,’ my wife and I know we have a dino-lifer on our hands.

Since our son started to crawl and then walk, he’s been attracted to all things dino (as well as monsters, Kaiju’s and things that go bump in the night) and seeing as how we live in Alberta, Canada’s dinosaur province, we have an ample supply of dinosaur related excursions and displays. Our museum in Edmonton has a massive fossil collection, as does the University of Alberta. Our airport has displays in it and we’re a three hour drive from Drumheller and the Royal Tyrell Museum, a place we’ve visited annually for the last four or five years now. We’ve even made the five hour drive north west to visit Grande Prairie and see the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum there. Yes, he’s obsessed. But guess what? So am I.

I’ve always loved dinosaurs and have been a huge fan of The Land Before Time (my first movie I ever saw in theatres), as well as the Jurassic Park books and movies. It’s made for a wonderful thing to connect with my son about, and as he plots how to become a paleontologist and questions when he can start working at the Royal Tyrell, we sit back and just enjoy the fact that he is loving science this much and learning as much as he can. He’s one of those rare eight year old’s that’ll go on and on about different clades and evolutionary markers of species. It’s fascinating.

What all of that means, is that I’ve had Luke Dumas’ book, ‘The Paleontologist,’ on my Kindle since October 31st, 2023. I had it preordered and was super excited to get to reading it, but then my reading life got super hectic. But I knew a trip to Drumheller would be coming in 2024 – one always does – so, I decided to wait to read it in conjunction with our trip.

I’m a huge fan of the various dino-horror fiction. Be it the rip and shred variety Tim Meyers delivers, or the slow, tactical, chess game style that Michael Crichton perfected. And no, I haven’t read ‘Dragon Teeth’ yet, but it’s coming up on my TBR soon!

Luke’s debut novel, ‘A History of Fear,’ had readers raving (and it’s on my Kindle as well!), but between the two, the dinosaur element won out over both and with the Drumheller trip coming, and fellow paleo-dino fiction fans telling me I needed to read this, I dove into this, excited to see what secrets the Hawthorne Museum held.

What I liked: A multi-layered story, with an epistolary aspect, ‘The Paleontologist’ made this dino-reader very happy. The novel follows Simon, a young-in-the-field paleontologist, who gets hired to be the head curator at his hometown museum. This is also where his younger sister disappeared before his aunt took him and raised him, Simon’s mother a drug-addict deemed unfit to parent.

Simon’s recently broken up with his long-time boyfriend, Kai, and with that recent heartbreak looming large and the numerous unanswered questions about his sisters disappearance, Simon is hoping to focus on bringing the museum back to relevance, while also finding out what happened to her.

Within that narrative, we learn about the former paleontologist, Mueller, who current staff claim went mad, and as Simon finds a hidden storage area, has strange encounters and hears odd noises, the museum begins to reveal itself to Simon and to us readers.

The novel, in its entirety, feels dirty. As though its always raining, the sun can’t break free behind the clouds and that at any moment, something is going to dart from the shadows and clamp its jaws on whatever unsuspecting character is nearby.

The highlight of the story is Simon’s journey. It is paralleled with Mueller’s, in that we read about his decent into madness with a fossil discovery and Simon reading his journey, all the while we see Simon become obsessed, become focused specifically on finding his sister, the truth and confronting what is going on at the museum head on.

While the first three-quarters was a build, a setting up of dominos, the final quarter is a full sprint. Dumas masterfully handles the revelations, the reactions and the repercussions.

What I didn’t like: So, I really loved this novel, but the average reader may find this one a bit dino heavy. While in many fantasy books we get paragraphs of descriptions surrounding what the characters eat, we experience similar moments where dinosaurs are described in significant detail. For some readers, this may slow the progress and be off putting. As well, the build of the first seventy-five percent is solid, but some may find it slower than they typically like. It worked well for this reader, so decide for yourself.

Why you should buy this: Dumas had notched a novel firmly in an area sorely lacking since Crichton passed on. This science based, supernatural thriller had a wonderfully related able main character, an excellent location and a lot of moving pieces that ultimately worked to create an unwavering tension. This book works on a lot of different levels and as such, is one of those novels that’ll continue to find new and unique readers for many, many years to come.

5/5