Bestiarii

Book One in the Echoes of Pangaea Series

“Grab a handful of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World, stir in a generous helping of Jurassic Park, and season with a sprig of fresh Tom Clancy and you have the makings of Bestiarii. James Tarr takes the reader on a heart-pounding trip through a dystopian landscape, where human enemies are the least of our concerns. Bringing his encyclopedic knowledge of the firearms world to bear, the author grips his audience with finely-observed technical details and highly relatable characters.”

—Iain Harrison

Editor, Recoil magazine

Season One winner of the History Channel TV series Top Shot

“I love this book…a cross between Zero Dark Thirty and Jurassic Park. A wonderful romp.”

—Michael Bane

Tarr’s best selling, genre-bending classic of science faction…

The Mexican civil war has been grinding on for so long that the American public has lost all taste for it. The U.S. has resorted to using private contractors—mercenaries—on a huge scale to prop up the failing Mexican army. One of the first things the guerrillas did at the start of the war was attack Pangaea, the famed animal park in remote northeast Mexico, a symbol of rampant capitalism. Officially all the creatures inside were killed. The truth is far different.
For his estranged son Michael’s high school graduation present, hotel mogul Roger Rudd splurges on a secret and expensive hunting trip in Mexico, hoping it will bring them closer. They hitch a ride down from Texas on one of the contractors’ helicopters, which along the way picks up Tina Echevarria, a beautiful and feisty Mexican graduate student with a huge secret.
When the helicopter crashes in the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains the combat-seasoned contractors, led by Irishman Seamus O’Malley, aren’t too worried…at first. Then it becomes obvious the helicopter didn’t crash, it was purposefully knocked out of the sky by an electromagnetic pulse—and the guerrillas are after one of their party.
The disparate group begins a cross-country scramble trying to evade not just gunmen but the prolific and savage offspring of the artificially-created animals once filling Pangaea. Animals thought to be eradicated a generation before when Pangaea’s walls were breached. Animals called theropods by park officials…but known to the rest of world as dinosaurs.