Jurassic Park is one of the most influential dinosaur movies ever made, bringing a high concept of bringing dinosaurs to the modern age. While Michael Crichton wrote two books, his works have gone on to inspire millions around the world, from paleontologists discovering new species of dinosaur every day to writers with the passion for the long extinct Titans. One of those inspired many was our subject today, Ethan Pettus, and his debut novel, Primitive War.
Initially an online story called Hunted where readers got to submit their own characters (some of whom appeared in the book), the book evolved over a period of three years to become popular among dinosaur lovers like me. I’m not kidding when I said this thing blew up overnight, with tabletop games, a comic series that’s still ongoing at the time of writing this, fan art, concept pieces drawn up by legendary artist Raph Lomotan, and a brand new movie set to release this year.
“But what’s all the fuss about?”, asks the reader (you). Well, sit back and I’ll tell you.
Primitive War takes place during the height of the Vietnam War, a brutal time where American GIs fought a bloody conflict with the Viet Cong. One of those teams of GIs go missing in a jungle valley, with equally mysterious creatures and sightings increasing in neighboring villages. General Jericho, whose troops were lost in that same jungle, calls in the only team who could find out what’s going on: Vulture Squad, lead by the masked Ryan Baker, second in command and team medical Xavier, Miller, the alcoholic explosive ordnance expert Leon, rookie Eli, and bromance bros Logan and Gerald. This team of commandos are tasked to venture deep into enemy territory to find those GIs, all the while being hunted down by Russian Spetsnaz troops, lead by the evil General Borodin, Viet Cong rebels, and worst of all, dinosaurs! That’s right. Living, breathing, fuzzy dinosaurs with a taste for flesh. Now it’s a race against time itself to stop the Russians from using a device called the Collider, which could either bring life into the world or destroy it.
Let’s get this out of the way: this book does not hold its punches when it comes to the violent depictions of how these dinosaurs kill. I remember reading reviews and was shocked to find many people off-put by how gruesome some of these deaths are. Personally, I’m a little desensitized by violent anime I’ve watched in the past, stuff like Berserk, Goblin Slayer, Corpse Party, High-school of the Dead, Chainsawman, and even Western shows like The Walking Dead and Primal, but I can say with full confidence that the guys who die here don’t just die…. they F-ing SUFFER!
In one scene when the Russians are tracking down Vulture Squad and come across a flock of Quetzalcoatlus, a species of Pterosaurs renowned for being the biggest in recorded history (think of something like a giant giraffe but with wings!), swoop down and start to eat them, but not just eat them whole, they rip them to shreds. Apparently in this universe, the Quetzalcoatlus has long prehensile Venom-esque tongues with a bunch of little barbed teeth they use to grab onto prey and rip them literally limb from limb. I looked this up, apparently this was more so the author taking creative liberties in making his dinosaurs scarier, since I couldn’t find anything on if Quetzalcoatlus had these tongues, but by god is this brilliant.
That’s not the only instance of how brutal it can go. Towards the end, a man is captured by Utahraptors and taken to their nest where they put him in a hole in the ground and use him to feed their young…alive. You know that scene in Re:Zero where Subaru is attacked by the rabbits from Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Yeah, imagine that but with raptor babies. Kudos to Ethan Pettus for coming up with creative ways to kill people.
With all that being said, I should clarify this might not be for everyone. Everyone has their own tastes and preferences when it comes to horror and gore in particular, given that most of these characters will face grizzly deaths at one point or another. Some people are gore hounds, where the more blood and guts the better. Others might be just content with a simple blood splatter on the walls, or a stab wound is enough. I myself can go either way;, I like a good blend of guts and gore to set the tone going forward. But sometimes I can get a little squicked out if it’s too much. Even while reading this book, I had to put it down because of the description, and you’re talking to a guy who lives for good description in books. So keep in mind, new readers, this book deals with heavy subject matter and gory depictions of people being eaten alive by dinosaurs.
So if it’s not for you don’t worry if you don’t want to read it.
But enough of that tangent, let’s talk about our cast of characters. Normally in a military work like this, you get the stoic leader, the hotshot rookie, the brainy smart guy, the big dumb thug, you name it. Sure you have Ryan, who is a very stoic leader, but he is a scared individual, both figuratively and literally. The mask he wears in the promotional art isn’t for show, but for hiding his scars from throughout the war, as he was the sole survivor of the original Vulture Squad and felt tremendous guilt over those deaths. Ryan and Jericho are constantly at each other’s throats; Jericho occasionally taunts Ryan for his supposed failure to keep his first squad alive. He’s not the only one who’s emotionally affected by the war. Eli, Xavier and Miller have all been through the worst, seen things and done things no man should ever be exposed to. Eli in particular, while being drunk with a bad attitude and throws the occasional racist remark towards Vietnamese people and Russians (it is a period piece after all so keep that in mind), he drinks only to forget the trauma he’s been exposed to. He reminds me of Hudson from Aliens after the initial encounter with the Xenomorphs, someone full of anger and fear of what’s going to happen to them next.
Leon, while initially being the rookie hotshot, does develop into something a lot worse down the line. Hhe was good friends with Ryan, the two having survived the initial T Rex encounter and met the morphine addicted Russian scientist, Andrei, and discover more about the reasons for the dinosaurs being there. But after his initial tour in the valley, he becomes more and more broken, the trauma weighing him down like an anchor sinking deeper and deeper into the depths of darkness. Fortunately, Leon does have a happy ending in the end of the book. Logan and Gerald do not, but their conjoined arc is what makes these two memorable for me.
Logan has schizophrenia, and we see that right away with entire sentences devoted to the voices tormenting him. These aren’t schoolyard taunts either; these are vile, vulgar insults leveled toward him only. Gerald is the only one who knows of Logan’s affliction, tries to convince him the voices in his head aren’t real and to never give up. Logan is a tortured character, more so than the others in my opinion. He’s advised by his friend multiple times in the first half to tell everyone of his schizophrenia but doesn’t, undoubtedly of the stigma towards mental health, especially in life or death situations, and possibly because he himself wouldn’t know what to do if he did. Logan and Gerald are forever intertwined with one needing the other, so when the group has their first encounter with the Utahraptors and Gerald is grievously injured, Logan is the one to shoot his friend, not wanting him to suffer. Then towards the end when Logan dies, he meets Gerald in the afterlife, forever free from the voices plaguing his head. As Avatar Roku once said, some friendships are so strong they can transcend lifetimes.
But now for the part y’all have been waiting for: let’s talk about the dinosaurs. At the time of release, Primitive War was praised for having scientifically accurate depictions of dinosaurs, the fuzzy feathery ones that look more like birds instead of reptiles, or in short, avian dinosaurs. Science marches on, and unfortunately for this book, newer discoveries, particularly on the Tyrannosaurus for example, shows that a lot of dinosaurs in this book didn’t have feathers. Hindsight is 50/50 and Pettus couldn’t have known things would change in the next couple of years, so we won’t hold it against him. That being said, the dinosaurs here are the height of the book, as they should be. Every time one of the dinosaurs showed up it grabbed my attention. They are the stars of the show.
There are a lot of references to other popular dinosaur movies, particularly Jurassic Park. The T-Rex family is obviously based on Buck, Doe, and Junior from The Lost World, confirming the popular theory of the Tyrannosaurus family structure. We meet the Father T-Rex once the squad enters the valley and we quickly see he is fiercely protective of his family, particularly when Ryan and Leon stumble onto the nest, almost shoot one of the baby rexes, and are subsequently chased down by both mother and father. When he’s separated from his family, there are several scenes where the father is desperately trying to get back to them. But then, near the final few chapters, the baby wanders into the Russian compound and is shot. The parents are devastated and instantly know who did it, rampaging through the base like Godzilla. While there is no evidence to support this theory, I personally like the idea of T-Rexes mating for life and caring for their young deeply.
Also before anyone asks, of course I imagined hearing the T-Rex roar from Jurassic Park, why wouldn’t I?
Much like Jurassic Park before, Primitive War utilized the raptor family of Dromaeosaurs as the major threat to Vulture Squad, in this case instead of genetically engineered Velociraptors, we have Utahraptors. The Utahraptors are possibly scarier than the Velociraptors could ever be. Initially a pack of four, these massive hunters were fast, agile, and seemingly bulletproof, given how many rounds of ammunition the Vultures shot at them (just like the Great Emu War of Australia). These raptors were more than a match for our team, even going as far as to killing one of them. They are also relentless, hunting the team for miles just by biting Ryan and dragging him off before he could escape.
One Utahraptor in particular, the Cyclops, named for losing its eye, is one of three major villains; that including Borodin and Con Nhen, a Viet Cong captain who is as ruthless as he is psychotic. While the heroes don’t meet every bad guy they encounter, each is a representation of the powers of mankind’s effects on the natural order. Borodin represents the constant industrial push forward in his goals to eliminate the States for the Soviet Union, Con Nhen (which my brain always reads as Conan like Conan the Barbarian) seems like a once peaceful person driven to barbarism because of the horrific things another country is doing to his home, and of course Cyclops represents nature’s adaptive power in spite of these threats.
This adaptation is best demonstrated in a scene where Andrei the scientist is explaining to Ryan why the dinosaurs must be held in this valley. They were never meant to live in our time, and in all likelihood should have died a few days after but instead they are thriving. All potential competition, such as tigers and other Vietnamese wildlife, have all been wiped out due to the dinosaurs and those that die or fled the valley are forced to adapt to this new change. In one instance in particular, a troop of monkeys formed a sort of symbiotic relationship with a herd of Stygimoloch, acting as an alter system for predators. Andrei then explains that if the dinosaurs aren’t either wiped out or contained, they will start migrating to the other corners of the globe. This is both intriguing and horrifying. Much as I and many people want to think living with dinosaurs would be awesome, in reality they would be more the case of an invasive species who would quickly take over almost any area with little to no resistance in their path to domination.
On that downer note, I’d like to talk about one of my favorite scenes from the book. Which, coincidentally, happens right after Ryan and Andrei’s chat about dinosaurs invading the rest of the world. The Vultures, having returned to Jericho’s camp, set out again in hopes of finding the Russian compound hidden somewhere in the valley on a patrol boat and ran into a herd of Triceratops. I love the depictions of these dinosaurs; they have these blood red colors all over their heads and faces with light blue bodies. The artwork depicting the trikes gives them a beautiful color combo. But peace is a fragile thing when a pack of Kaprosuchus attacks the herd. Imagine if a crocodile had a baby with a bear and a boar and you get this prehistoric powerhouse of a creature. The whole chapter is a roller coaster, with Ttriceratopses stampeding in the water, Kaprosuchus are attacking everything with two eyes and a pulse, meanwhile the boat is being knocked around like a paper boat being swept away by a hurricane.
I have to say Primitive War is a solid book. It’s got great characters; the dinosaurs are incredible with scenes of violence and blood-soaked carnage but also demonstrating the creativity of the author in his depictions of the beast from 65 million years ago. My only criticism of Ethan Pettus’s work is he does use any abbreviations for the dinosaurs’ names. Instead of saying T-Rex, like I have, he always refers to them as simply Tyrannosaurus. Instead of calling the Utahraptors just “raptors”, he uses the full names. It felt tiring to keep reading the names over and over and over again, especially towards the end when my brain just started referring to them as Rexes or raptors. I’m not sure what the author was trying to accomplish here, he could have just made it easy by just writing “T-Rex”. It’s not like we’re unfamiliar with that term.
Then there are the character moments. Most stick the landing when it comes to characterization, but there are scenes where you’re just going “Okay, you’re a psycho who wants to kill everyone, get on with it”. I can understand tying up loose ends in a book, but there are times where this could’ve been a single huge chapter. Mind you if the chapter is too long, people can be turned off by it. Even the ending could theoretically hit or miss depending on your preference.
Regardless, Primitive War by Ethan Pettus is a good book, easily recommended to anyone who wants a gory, dinosaur-filled war novel featuring fun and interesting characters and even cooler dinosaurs. I’m definitely looking forward to the movie coming out, let’s see how much of a crisis these dinos can make!
