Using fiction to expand the audience for a scientific idea is a novel ploy. Robert Bakker has given us one of the best examples of this technique. In The Dinosaur Heresies, Bakker presented a beautifully written, but highly detailed, account of the likely scenarios of dinosaur existence. The full range of dinosaur life was described with elegant care, overlaid with Bakker's fine wit. But the wealth of information in that book may have deterred some readers from delving into what was basically a serious description. Here, Bakker's simply dumped much of the scientific annotation to provide a similar depiction of dinosaur life.
Raptor Red incorporates a recent find of a large predatory dinosaur. Having positioned the find with its cognomen, Utahraptor, Bakker weaves a highly plausible tale of likely events in this creature's life. Cleverly portraying Raptor Red as female, he gives the "character" a wider range of experiences. Most of these are fully credible based on the increased knowledge gained by teams of paleontologists and volunteers. For example, recent finds indicate dinosaurs, unlike most of today's reptiles, probably stayed with nestlings after the hatch. Bakker has done a credible job in working in this concept and other revisionist thinking about probable dinosaur behaviour.
We must be careful in assessing whether Bakker has taken liberties with levels of dinosaur intelligence. Science has revealed unexpected mental capacity in the minute fruit fly [see Jonathan Weiner's Time, Love, Memory for a fascinating account]. Dinosaurs reigned over the planet for over 150 million years. That's a fine testimonial to their adaptability and capacity for survival. Bakker acknowledges this aptitude at the story's opening by introducing the raptor as a migratory species entering a new territory. From this beginning he goes on to give the raptor emotional capacity, environmental awareness, and almost love. While flirting lightly with anthropomorphism, Bakker deftly maintains the creature's reptilian identity. It's a fine line, but he manages it without granting the animal more intellect than it deserves. He must find a way to impart motivation and without some means of doing so, we wouldn't have had the story. And it's a fine story.