Footprints of Thunder

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Dinos are stomping all over the fall fiction list: Crichton's upcoming Lost World, Bakker's Raptor Red and now this overblown tale in which wrinkles in time send the giant lizards into our near future. David's first novel is set up like a classic disaster yarn: he follows several individuals and groups as they grapple with the approach, onslaught and aftermath of the cataclysmic ``time wave''-a culmination of all those nuclear tests-that exchanges parcels of today's land, including much of Manhattan, with their prehistoric counterparts. That's a nifty premise, but David works it ragged. His human cast is too large-the U.S. president, scientists, tourists, bikers, gang members, a little old lady, a dysfunctional family out sailing, etc.-to inspire sympathy with anyone in particular. His dinos, with a couple of exceptions, are too hazily drawn to inspire the sort of fear or awe that Crichton's did in Jurassic Park. There's far-fetched science too, as a frantic White House comes up with a solution that could just lead to doomsday. Despite a few memorable moments most notably, that little old lady domesticating a duckbill dino with bags of sugar it's all too much, as overbearing as the ancient beasts themselves. Oct.

Library Journal

This apocalyptic vision, another departure from routine mystery, sports a lengthy cast of characters but focuses intermittently on teenage and college-age kids. Because they are more resilient than some, the young learn to deal with sudden changes that occur throughout the planet. Various locations suddenly disappear amid sonic booms and terrible storms, only to be replaced with strange terrains, out-of-place climates, weird plants, and even dinosaurs. The president's science adviser theorizes about "time displacement," but doomsayers have their own ideas. This suspenseful, fantastic first novel may attract an audience because of the dinosaurs.

Carl Hays

The dinosaur craze is definitely getting its second wind. Witness Michael Crichton's spanking new "Jurassic Park" sequel, "The Lost World" , and this disaster novel with its far-fetched but irresistible premise. Foreshadowed by anomalous showers of corn and fish occurring at ever shorter intervals, a catastrophic rupture in space-time fuses together two widely disparate eras of Earth history, the present day and the age of dinosaurs. The result is a crazy quilt of juxtaposed topographies in which New York's skyline overlooks herds of grazing iguanodons, and whole mountains blockade interstate highways. In standard disaster novel fashion, the colorful lineup of victims includes a family stranded at sea on the back of a wading brontosaurus; the president's bewildered, Carl Saganish science advisor; and a motley group of professors who predicted the rupture and represent the world's best hope of understanding it. David jumbles quantum physics and fringe science to give his scenario semi-plausible foundations, but believable characters and riveting, nonstop action ultimately sustain this fanciful dinosaur tale.

From the Publisher

"Footprints of Thunder kept me up past dawn, red-eyed and riveted. A true roller coaster of a read." —Lincoln Child, bestselling coauthor of The Relic

"A classic end-of-the-world novel in the tradition of Lucifer's Hammer—an utterly original vision of the apocalypse." —Douglas Preston, bestselling author of Dinosaurs in the Attic