Lions, tigers, bears...and hunters, oh my! Even as prehistoric predators come back to life, the humans are still the most treacherous.

From Beast to Jurassic Park, I’ve always enjoyed movies and books that form from the premise of unusual predators giving the surrounding human cast a run for their money. Maybe it’s the primal instinct of survival that fascinates me, but clearly I am not the only audience for such media because it continues to bring in numbers. The predators at the heart of The Lazarus Key, long extinct animals brought back to life with a little help of their modern ancestors, don’t fail to deliver on the promised thrills.

Setting the tone for the rest of the novel, the opening chapter establishes not only just how deadly the featured predators can be. The first few pages also showcase just how much the author excels at bringing to life her ideas through vivid description. There is a definite cinematic feel to the writing, which isn’t easy considering the scope of some scenes later in the novel. Due to the nature of most creature fiction, gore and violence are to be expected. Yet, neither feel excessive or without reason for being there in the story.

Despite truly enjoying The Lazarus Key in the end, I vacillated between ratings at many points. The prose and descriptions are excellent, but the dialogue could feel stilted or just used to dump a lot of information. A few instances also teetered toward talking head syndrome. Pages of just straight dialogue back and forth without any details to support it or help track who’s talking.

The characterization, especially of the antagonists, and the choice of focus also kept this from being a higher rating for me. At points, the enemy camp felt almost cartoonish. Even more so when compared to the better fleshed-out protagonists, like the game warden driven by her need to protect. The novel excels when the animals are in the spotlight which made large swaths of the middle harder to get through because of the heavier focus on the humans behind them. Some plot threads also seemed to have been dropped to try and set up a sequel.

Fans of a good creature story are sure to enjoy The Lazarus Key. Corrupt humans may have brought these predators to life in the novel, some of them millenia after they’d died out. But, it’s the author that brought them to life for me as the reader.

The Lazarus Key is available to buy on Amazon.

Verdict:

READABLE