It's written somewhat like a B-movie with several scenarios that seem a to really test the suspension of disbelief, even for a book targeted for younger audiences.(MILD SPOILERS) The main plot of the novel surrounds a paleontologist that stumbles on a living dinosaur nest and steals an egg. The mother raptor attacks, injures him and then he tasks his son to find the egg he stole and dropped in the cave. What kind of parent is that? Another far fetched event is when the main characters are just attacked by the raptor- but they flee to the girl's grandmother's vending stand. As soon as they arrive, the grandmother goads them into buying something. Two kids that just escaped death, and one of them is related to her. The guy buys a cheap arrowhead and then is pressured into eating a worm. Yes, you read that right. All of this to get some information and assistance on locating the raptor after being attacked by said savage beast! Now I find that a little hard to swallow, even when it comes to mediocre writing. (END SPOILERS)
I read this in High School and didn't find it memorable. I waited about fifteen years to see if my mind changed and to refresh my memory, so I gave it a re-read recently. I also wanted to give it another shot because I don't find many novels surrounding dinosaurs, especially in the horror department. 'Raptor' is your run of the mill animal attack novel, where the brunt of the horror is the imagined adrenaline rush from being chased by a large prehistoric theropod that tries too hard to recapture Jurassic Park's suspense. The author tried to do something different and put an original spin on the dinosaurs, but it reminded me too much of Alien. Zindel's writing isn't very high quality, has a few spelling errors and is definitely more for younger readers rather than older adults. One thing I do like about his writing is he is VERY descriptive and intimate with disgusting details and scenes relating to gore and filth. His narration of the raptor's unhygienic anatomy and brutal attacks are fairly decent, although you can tell that's probably where he had the most fun writing. It can make your nose wrinkle, and could probably unsettle those with weak stomach (which I don't have thankfully). The characters aren't that likeable or relatable and you don't really find yourself investing in anything other than wishing the end would hurry up. While I do like the heavy handed gory descriptions, I don't think Paul Zindel's writing is for me.
half stars for the effectively gross narrations, 2 stars for being a dinosaur horror novel. Would not recommend unless you are desperate or it's the last book on Earth. ( )

Raptor is an excellent book that I wasn’t able to put down. Raptor is about a boy named Zach that after his dad got caught in a rock slide him and his friend Uta, a young native American, find an egg in the rubble. They bring the egg to Zach’s house only to find that it’s a raptor egg! Now, they have to go back to the mountain to protect the other raptors from Zach’s dad’s greedy paleontologist boss, Mr. Bone, finds them.

I read Raptor and The Reef Of Death by Paul Zindel and I noticed lots of similarities between them. Most of the similarities were in the characters like both had a boy main character, a native girl that knew the setting well, a wise native elder and a power and fame seeking scientist. Both have the same plot too. In Raptor they need to find the other raptors and in The Reef Of Death they need to find treasure. Lastly, in both books the main character almost dies but is saved by the girl. I thought both books were interesting and suspenseful that is what my opinion is on Raptor by Paul Zindel.

its a thirer and a horrer.i like this book cause its a litte blood and guts.but i recomend this book to you ( )

#4, 2006

Bad, bad, and BAD. It's rare I say this about a book, because I think most of them (the ones I bother to pick up in the first place, anyway) have at least some redeeming feature. Not this book. It's a young adult novel that we bought at the library sale (thank heavens I only paid a quarter for it!) because of the subject matter - dinosaurs. We started reading it last summer as a bedtime story for my seven-year-old, but fortunately it got stuck under the bed and forgotten. It reappeared last week, and we read part of a chapter together, when I decided that I wasn't going to finish this one with my son - not worthy of our reading-aloud time. I did decide to finish it up on my own, since we were already half-way through. Probably shouldn't have bothered, since it was bad all the way through. I found none of the characters endearing, especially the main character, whom I found to be annoying, and a jerk who came up with all sorts of stupid reasons for doing even stupider things. He even managed to find dodgy reasons for doing things that could have easily been framed as honorable. In addition to the lameness of the characters, it was exceedingly poorly written - the prose was awful, and I often found the action hard to follow. Although, towards the end, it's probably because I was rushing through trying to avoid wasting more time than necessary to get to the end of this big loser. The real surprise? When I realized that this author has written other books that must have some merit - he's won a Pulitzer Prize. O_o I'm not sure I can even bear to register and release it - I'd hate to inflict this on some other unsuspecting reader. ( )