Friday, August 05, 2011

PRIMEVAL: latest take on sasquatch in fiction

I love David Golemon's Event Group thrillers, in part because I wish I'd invented the concept of a secret government "historical recovery" team myself. Primeval, the latest, gives an unusual take on sasquatch. In Goleman's fiction, the squatches are neither the shy giants of most novels (like Murphy's Where Legends Roam) or the vengeance-wreakers of Hanson's Shadowkiller. His descendants of Gigantopitchecus (misspelled throughout, which is really weird because Goleman's research is usually good), are huge and generally keep to themselves, but they also keep an eye on the human world. They are very intelligent, able to camouflage themselves well, and will band together to wreak havoc on any intruders of their remote Alaskan fastness. The "sky burials" of their dead, a concept borrowed from Native American tribes, is interesting but makes me wonder why no one on Google Earth ever noticed thousands of huge corpses rotting in treetops. (Another nitpick: I won't spoil the details, but the secret bombing mission he describes to set the action in motion would never have gotten off the ground with its payload.)
Don't let the nitpicks turn you off, though. The Event Group novels are fast-moving fun with a lot of suspense and good ideas. Enjoy.

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