Z. Rex (Steve Cole)

Z. Rex
The Hunting series, Book 1
Steve Cole
Puffin Books
Fiction, MG Action/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: For twelve-year-old Adam Adlar, life with his tech genius father Bill has its ups and downs. On the upside, he gets to play with Dad's cutting-edge "Ultra-Reality" equipment as the first (and thus far only) test subject, a system that can actually insert ideas and sensations into one's brain so a player is living the game in a way even virtual reality can only dream of imitating. On the downside, Adam often feels more like luggage than a son, following his dad around the world in pursuit of fresh funding and new backers, left behind in hotel rooms - sometimes for days at a time. Dad's latest gig lands them in New Mexico, about as far from Adam's beloved native Edinburgh as possible, but surely this project's the one that will get Ultra-Reality funded. Just two or three days, Dad promises, before disappearing into a sleek black car and riding off into the desert.
Five days later, and aside from a couple of ambiguous texts and a visit from a surly bodyguard, Adam hasn't had any contact with his father. Then a strange text arrives - just before the building is destroyed, demolished by an impossible, invisible monster.
At first, Adam thinks it's a Tyrannosaurus rex... but, while there's no way to know if the apex Cretaceous predators had chameleon skin like this brute, he knows for a fact that T. rexes didn't have five-fingered hands. Nor did they have wings. And they certainly couldn't talk, albeit in stunted, struggling sounds. The monster seems strangely fixated on locating Adam and his missing father, and from the carnage left in its wake Adam doesn't want to know what the "Z. rex" has planned for them. But first impressions might be deceiving. Perhaps the impossible dinosaur isn't his enemy, but his only ally against something far more dangerous, something that has already trapped his dad and is now coming for Adam himself.

REVIEW: I'll admit at the outset here that the rating might be mildly generous, but I'm taking into account both the target audience and my own middling-to-low expectations when I downloaded this audiobook from Libby. (I'll also admit that I initially thought Z. Rex would involve zombie dinosaurs, which sounded like it could've been a cheesy fun time.) But it turned out to have just a little more to it than it seemed - nothing hugely deep, but more than I expected.
Adam starts the story as the tagalong son of a single father. He loves his dad, and his dad loves him, but Bill Adlar's obsessive pursuit of Ultra-Reality (and the associated "Think-Send" tech that can pull memories from and implant knowledge into a living mind) hasn't provided the most stable home life, and thus far every would-be sponsor and backer has fallen through. Adam is so used to being left behind that he doesn't really think much of his father not coming back when he said he would... but when things start literally blowing apart, just when the "bodyguard" turns up at the apartment with a gun and a very unfriendly attitude, he's jarred out of his complacency. From here, Adam's off on a wild race, one that eventually sees him captured by "Zed" the Z-rex... and that name alone is enough to clue Adam into the fact that there's more to the monster than its apparent savageness; Bill Adlar was born in the American Midwest, but took to pronouncing "Z" as "zed" while raising a son with an Edinburgh woman, so hearing "zed" from a monster can't be a coincidence. Zed starts out an apparent beast, despite his stunted ability to speak; several brutes are mauled and outright killed while trying to take the dinosaur down, and Adam is terrified he'll be next on the menu. Yet it's also clear that Zed has some ulterior motive in mind as he holds the boy hostage in pursuit of Bill Adlar. The two find themselves in an uneasy alliance against greater enemies whose plans make one rampaging, genetically enhanced Tyrannosaurus rex seem downright insignificant.
This easily could've been a shallow, simple book of running and screaming and fighting dinos and sneering baddies. On some level, yes, it does have all those. But there's also just a hair more going on. Zed isn't a simplistic beast, nor is he merely a misunderstood giant prehistoric puppy; he can and does kill in pursuit of his goals, and also has an animal temper at times that can be hard to rein in, so Adam isn't stupid to be reticent to team up with him for so long. With his wings, humanlike intelligence, and other enhancements, Zed straddles a line between dinosaur and dragon... and what kid in the target audience wouldn't love to befriend a dragon? (Heck, I'm in my upper 40's and I'd still love a dragon buddy.) Adam himself can be a bit slow on the uptake at times, but does eventually grow more of a spine. The baddies can be a slight bit mustache-twirly and shallow, but they really don't need to be more than that in a story like this, and they prove to be quite formidable foes even to a boy with a winged dinosaur in his corner.
There are some flaws, particularly in generous handwaves of tech and science and how evolution - even artificially-juiced evolution - would work. It's also a very boy-heavy cast, which starts to feel conspicuous. I expected a bit more of a follow-through on the opening scene and the Ultra-Reality gaming itself (which seems to be pretty much forgotten by the end). And a few "twists" are a bit obvious as an older reader. But those issues aside, looking at it as a younger reader (especially a boy and/or a dinosaur lover) would approach it, Z. Rex is actually entertaining for what it is, a story that doesn't insult the audience by glossing over the brutality of an apex predator (or the brutality of the kind of people who think recreating and unleashing said predator is a good idea).

You Might Also Enjoy:
Dragons vs. Drones (Wesley King) - My Review
Domesticating Dragons (Dan Koboldt) - My Review
Cryptid Hunters (Roland Smith) - My Review