From Introduction:
When the anarchist wizards pulled the prehistoric world out of the past and resurrected it in the modern Kingswood forest, they sought to build a world of bounty and comfort for themselves. They desired rich fruits that could be plucked off their trees all year round, succulent herbs and tubers growing like weeds around their homes, and even brightly-coloured birds whose songs would enliven their days and nights. These things all arrived, but so did the predators. Though varied, one has proved to be more of an immediate problem than all the others — the lightning raptor.
Utopian communities soon learned to drive these beasts away — or they were themselves driven out of the forest. When soldiers of the king arrived to survey the damage caused by these unscrupulous sorcerers, they found these electric reptiles to be a much greater concern, and few that have faced them in battle would like to do so again.
Lightning raptors are territorial alpha predators. They do not tolerate competition, either from other species or their own. In prehistoric times, there were numerous examples of megafauna that could defy them, huge beasts that could not even be harmed by their lightning. But now there are no huge monsters in the Kingswood — no dragons, no mammoths, no elephants. Here, these lightning lords can rule uncontested.