Jump Start
Gary Carter
Publish America, $19.95, 177 pp.
ISBN 1413701930

Ready to quit if nothing comes of this field trip with his students to Death Valley, Jacob Malfusco and his team uncover what appears to be the bones of a flying dinosaur, but not like a pterosaur as the wings are different. Jacob feels crazy but tells his students it looks like the remains of a mythological dragon.

In Ayers Rock Australia, archaeologist Marsha Kimbrough hopes to salvage her dying career by proving that ancient astronauts came to earth. Her daughter Tricia accompanies her on the trek, but instead of studying cave paintings, they uncover the top of an Egyptian pyramid buried for centuries under the Australian sand.

In Mount Palomar, California, senior astronomer Papalov Darringer announces that millions of meteors are on a trajectory towards earth and will hit within a year. Pappy also states that these "rocks" all appear to be the identical size.

These three events seem to have nothing in common yet they do for what is coming to the earth has not existed on this orb in almost two millennium. The planet, in spite of technical advances, has no defenses unless Jacob, Marsha, and Pappy can find a way to save their species from extinction.

JUMP START grips the reader from the very moment that a depressed Jacob finds that first rib, remains at that pace through the next two discoveries, and then accelerates into a faster-than-light alien invasion tale. The action-packed storyline contains solid key characters as Jacob and Marsha know failure in relationships and at work while Pappy feels every minute of his sixty-eight years. Gary Carter deserves accolades for this Von Daniken meets HG Wells in a modern retelling of George and the Dragon.

Harriet Klausner