Note: This review contains mild spoilers. (And a few rants.)
Frankly, if I hadn’t gone in with low expectations, I would probably be much harsher on this book rating-wise. I give it a two-and a half out of five. First of all, I am not a fan of the crime genre. Whereas fantasy, science fiction, and horror are a vast ocean of possibilities, the mystery/crime genre exists in a stagnant puddle. Someone occasionally dips a stick in and swirls it around, but ultimately it remains unchanged. Douglas Preston’s “Extinction” swirled the puddle just enough to convince me to pick it up, but – make no mistake – it follows the same worn out and utterly predictable track as every other crime novel before it. The writing is decent enough and the characters are… fine.
I do feel I need to say flat out that the way Douglas feels the need to repeatedly bring up Agent Cash’s weight/body size is a major problem for me. It’s not at all necessary to the story that we hear about her scarfing down junk food. It’s also not relevant to the story to have her talk about how much she exercises or wants to go on a diet. Douglas could have easily just introduced her as being a plus-size woman in good physical condition with a desire to improve her eating habits. Instead, her weight and dietary routines become an unnecessary point of fixation. Does the weight of any of the other characters come up? No. So why is it such a fixation with Cash? Probably because she’s a woman and society still insists on reducing the value of women to their physical appearance.
On the note of things that didn’t need to be included in this novel; there were a considerable amount of times characters compared their situation to “Jurassic Park”. The first fourth or third of this book, characters bring up “Jurassic Park”. This was a mistake for two simple reasons. The first being that referencing another literary piece of work inherently leads to comparison. Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park” is a favorite of mine. Douglas shoots himself in the foot by making me compare his book to “Jurassic Park”. All I wanted to do when it was brought up was go re-read “Jurassic Park” instead. The second is that you should never have a character criticize the thing you’re referencing, if you can’t actually back up the argument. Erebus’s lead scientist criticizes the comparison one of the agents makes to what he is doing to what was done in “Jurassic Park”. He goes on a rant about how what they’ve done is “real”, while “Jurassic Park” is “bad fiction” (how dare you sir) and “bad science” (a little outdated, perhaps, but still sound). However, when Mr. Lead Scientist goes on to explain the process they use for “de-extincting” animals, I’m annoyed that the process he describes is almost an exact copy of what is done in “Jurassic Park”! I don’t know if Douglas does this on purpose or not. I can’t imagine he would, considering it makes the lead scientist character come off as incompetent.
I really want to find something to praise this book about, but, frankly, I was thoroughly unimpressed. The pacing is poor. I had more or less guessed the entire plot from the synopsis. There was a small bit about why they had de-extincted the Neanderthals, but that felt to me to be shoehorned in and unnecessary. Maybe I was just too bored already, but by the time they started talking about the why, I couldn’t have cared less. Throw in this “twist” on using Neanderthal genes to make designer babies and I’m beyond rolling my eyes at this nonsense.
If you like crime books, this book will probably be fine for you. Though, I would recommend anything by Agatha Christie or Craig Johnson’s “Walt Longmire” series before this book. If you are picking this up hoping for an interesting sci-fi thriller (as I was), don’t bother. Instead, read literally anything by Michael Crichton, especially “Jurassic Park” and “The Lost World”, if you haven’t already.
Thank you for reading my review on “Extinction” by Douglas Preston! Let me know what you think in a comment. Don’t hesitate to ask questions regarding any of my comments or criticisms. You are more than welcome to disagree and I’m always happy to re-evaluate my opinion on something. I simply ask that the comments stay respectful to everyone.