THE EYE OF THE GODS

A shaggy-dinosaur love story laid in the Amazon territory of Venezuela. Deep in the insectival jungle, way out back in blowdart country, rises ""the Autana,"" an unclimbed peak honeycombed with caves. When Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Morgan published a book in which he ""took seriously"" the native legends about a tyrannosaur living in the caves of Autana, he did it to boost sales. But now pretty paleontologist Page Foster, whose grandfather uncovered the first dinosaur bone in the States, believes and is going on a solo expedition to find the mighty lizard. Morgan's newspaper, in the midst of a circulation war, dispatches him into the jungle with the fearless dinosaur-huntress. He has to fly her in, teach her mountain-climbing, guide her through dangerous natives and up the Amazon--grouching about his own false book that has landed him out here--and what happens is great fun indeed, something like Gable and Gardner in Mogambo, with love in a sleeping bag strung to the sheer face of Autana. (Author Owen was on the only team ever to climb Autana.) It's too bad indeed that the cheer fizzles when a terrorist subplot swallows up the larger interest of Cuyakiare, the Godzilla of the Amazon. But even so, this is a winningly mindless adventure-romance, with chuckling dialogue and spacey chills on the mountain face.