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michalow's review against another edition
5.0
Paige Williams found an amazing story to tell. The actual smuggling and selling of a Mongolian dinosaur is bizarre enough, but Williams dives deeply into a wide range of fields and events that helped shape that story, giving readers insight into the history of paleontology, natural history collections, the commercial fossil trade, Mongolian politics, and other unexpected topics.
marieintheraw's review against another edition
2.0
This was such a bummer. It focuses on who can "own" dinosaur bones, but like managed to make it drawn out and boring?
jasonwalko's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.25
Yeah this one’s pretty neat kinda sorta, I agree with the people saying that this has a tendency to go on totally unrelated tangents that have nothing to do with the actual story. I don’t need to know about how the Mongolian people slaughter goats or about the entire history of Mongolia’s political turmoil and we really didn’t need an entire biography of Mary Anning right smack in the middle (her story is very cool and interesting and definitely worth reading about but it did not need to be in this book). But I didn’t hate this, in fact I thought the story was pretty cool but I wish it focused more on the actual trial rather than being a biography of this Prokopi guy every person that he ever interacted with and also a lot of tangentially related historical figures. Probably could’ve taken out the Roy Chapman Andrews stuff too but that stuff was kinda relevant I guess. The author did a pretty good job of keeping it all objective. I went in expecting to side with the Mongolians here but I didn’t end up liking any of the people involved except for maybe Bolort. There really should’ve been a clearer point made about how a lot of this fossil hunting/poaching stuff has roots in imperialism because both sides are kinda playing that angle here and the Roy Chapman Andrews stuff also ties into that. Also this Prokopi guy was such a weird dude lol I feel like the book tries to make him sympathetic but at the end of the day he’s a guy who made a living pillaging the earth for profit. So yeah cool story but lots of unnecessary stuff and could’ve been slimmed down a lot.
Also the audiobook narrator would do these weird foreign accents for the Mongolian people which was kinda weird. I mean she did it for the British people too but still. Not sure how to feel about that.
Also the audiobook narrator would do these weird foreign accents for the Mongolian people which was kinda weird. I mean she did it for the British people too but still. Not sure how to feel about that.
kvmeehan's review against another edition
informative
relaxing
medium-paced
4.0
This is a well written and informative book. But the narrator of the audiobook used some sort of vague foreign accents for several of the people quoted in the book, that just came off as distracting, not adding anything positive to the listening experience.