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2.89 AVERAGE
2.89 AVERAGE
Well honestly this book was a big disappointment for me really because after hearing the hype surrounding it and hearing George R R Martin endorse this I was at least highly intrigued by the idea of including Dinosaurs within a Fantasy...however, this book is nothing like what I expected or hoped for and every time I thought it could become something good it really disappointed me in the direction it turned.
I have many complaints when it comes to this book but mainly it comes down to lack of originality and muddled plotting. In this story we're focusing on a world called Paradise and all we know about it, for the majority of the book, is that it's not Earth. I personally liked the idea that maybe this was a Fantasy with Sci-fi themes and Paradise is a world that Humans have travelled to and inhabited but it just happens to have Dinosaurs there, but within the confines of the story this doesn't work.
I then considered the idea that this world was just that, a secondary world which had an alternative history so Dinosaurs have survived and have learned to co-exist on the planet with Humans - again this doesn't work because if this is the case and we're in an alternative medieval period, why are the character's heights and measurements all measured in centimetres????
Finally I tried to wrap my head around the idea that this is a created world where people control all the humans and Dinosaurs on the world and manipulate them into doing things for whatever reason they feel like and whilst this does kind of work as a concept, it honestly doesn't work in terms of the plot and the muddled layout of this world. Why do we have a muddle of Dinosaurs, Angels, Gods, Fey, Humans and all sorts of other random stuff all just getting along?? This so wouldn't work? Why do we have God-like creatures who 'made' this world? Who are they? What is the reason? NONE of this is at any point explained and the small hints that we do get are both conflicting and misleading at various points of the story.
I'm not often someone who gets angry about a book or gives out a 1* rating. In fact it's pretty rare for me to ever go below a 2* rating as I like to at least give credit where credit is due, but honestly nothing really worked for me in this. The best bit of this story for me is when the book is almost at the end and one of the characters sings a song about a battle and the only reason that worked for me was because I liked the rhymes and lyrics... If this is the only thing I think works in the book then seriously, something must be pretty messed up, and in this book nothing else was really worth talking about or redeemable.
I don't want to go on a huge rant about this book and the various pitfalls it fell into, but unfortunately it's the only way that I'm going to be able to describe my thoughts. We have 4 major characters in the book with a 5th who becomes much more major late in the story. Out of these 5 characters, 4 of them are men and they're all 'great' leaders and fighters and plotters (how typical). The single lady who is a main character had the potential to do some really cool things and involve herself in the plot in many ways, instead she's used as eye-candy for the men and an object to rape and assault at various points. I'm not usually a stickler for women and the portrayal in fantasy as I know it's often not the best, but honestly she COULD have been a awesome character and instead she was weak and crap!!! Disappointing!
Moving onto another point, the main viewpoint character is called Rob and I felt as though he was probably the least developed for me of them all which is ridiculous as we see mostly from his pov. The reason I say he's the weakest in terms of development is because all he does is adore the other character of Karyl and praise him... very tedious and boring to read after a fair few times!!
Karyl and Jaume are basically the same except Karyl has no conscience and Jaume is all about being a nice guy. They're both 'awesome' in everyone else's eyes and they both know exactly how to fix any dire situation at the last minute. Very predictably they're both going to 'win' at whatever they do.
Finally the last main character is Falk and he's the only one who actually interested me by the end of the book as the rest I had really given up all hope of redemption for. He, at least, has a fairly interesting plot which at the end of the book does do some more interesting stuff (if still not that original).
This book also over-uses profanity and rape etc massively. I have no problem at all with swearing and such in books because I read a lot of it and it takes a LOT for it to affect me. This book is so blasé about throwing swear words and horrible characters about that it just got annoying and silly. Unfortunately when profanity is overused it really doesn't even have an effect when actual bad stuff is happening and so this book had very little 'shock' factor in terms of events or language.
Equally it's not beautifully written or anything like that and it seems as though almost every chapter and paragraph was mostly 'he slashes this dinosaur which is super terrifying and scary and manages to kill it with ease because he's super cool' which is just ridiculous... Dinosaurs are made out to be SO terrifying, and yet by sitting on top of a small and nimble one you seem able to take down even the most terrifying beastly dino in a few blows... Come on!!! Really?!
Now moving onto the plot. This is called the Dinosaur Lords. We get little to no mention of the real history of the world or how Dinosaurs have been trained to co-exist with humans meaning that not only is it instantly unbelievable, but kind of disappointing. We then meet our characters and see them ride into an initial battle on Dinos and save the day (kind of cool when you're first starting the book). From this point on, however it's all confusion until about the halfway point. We have trouble knowing who is who and what on earth they are trying to achieve or who they work for. There are some crazy moments of long political debates which are dull as we have no idea who is who and nor do we feel invested in the story yet or care, and also we then have a fair few scenes of 'training up' recruits and some random acts of magic. NONE of this has really got anything to do with Dinosaurs, they are probably the smallest focus of the whole book, woefully underdeveloped and certainly not anywhere near as badass or cool as they should have been.
I don't really have the energy to keep on talking about this but suffice to say every moment it could have redeemed itself it didn't and the ending more infuriated me than made me want to proceed with the next one (so naturally I won't be). This book is further from Jurassic Park and Game of Thrones than pretty much anything else in Fantasy in that every troupe and every rubbish idea you can think of is sadly used and I just did not think it worth recommending to anyone (particularly if they like Dinosaurs and don't want them to be totally crappy as they are in this!).
Honestly I have nothing against the author himself, but this book just wasn't a book I enjoyed for anything and I personally can find very little to praise. I read this with a lot of others and no one found it easy to understand or to give a good rating to, so I don't feel too bad about this review, but it's probably the worst review I have ever given to a book on here. 1* is more than I wish I could award this. I don't think it's worth reading at all sadly...
I have many complaints when it comes to this book but mainly it comes down to lack of originality and muddled plotting. In this story we're focusing on a world called Paradise and all we know about it, for the majority of the book, is that it's not Earth. I personally liked the idea that maybe this was a Fantasy with Sci-fi themes and Paradise is a world that Humans have travelled to and inhabited but it just happens to have Dinosaurs there, but within the confines of the story this doesn't work.
I then considered the idea that this world was just that, a secondary world which had an alternative history so Dinosaurs have survived and have learned to co-exist on the planet with Humans - again this doesn't work because if this is the case and we're in an alternative medieval period, why are the character's heights and measurements all measured in centimetres????
Finally I tried to wrap my head around the idea that this is a created world where people control all the humans and Dinosaurs on the world and manipulate them into doing things for whatever reason they feel like and whilst this does kind of work as a concept, it honestly doesn't work in terms of the plot and the muddled layout of this world. Why do we have a muddle of Dinosaurs, Angels, Gods, Fey, Humans and all sorts of other random stuff all just getting along?? This so wouldn't work? Why do we have God-like creatures who 'made' this world? Who are they? What is the reason? NONE of this is at any point explained and the small hints that we do get are both conflicting and misleading at various points of the story.
I'm not often someone who gets angry about a book or gives out a 1* rating. In fact it's pretty rare for me to ever go below a 2* rating as I like to at least give credit where credit is due, but honestly nothing really worked for me in this. The best bit of this story for me is when the book is almost at the end and one of the characters sings a song about a battle and the only reason that worked for me was because I liked the rhymes and lyrics... If this is the only thing I think works in the book then seriously, something must be pretty messed up, and in this book nothing else was really worth talking about or redeemable.
I don't want to go on a huge rant about this book and the various pitfalls it fell into, but unfortunately it's the only way that I'm going to be able to describe my thoughts. We have 4 major characters in the book with a 5th who becomes much more major late in the story. Out of these 5 characters, 4 of them are men and they're all 'great' leaders and fighters and plotters (how typical). The single lady who is a main character had the potential to do some really cool things and involve herself in the plot in many ways, instead she's used as eye-candy for the men and an object to rape and assault at various points. I'm not usually a stickler for women and the portrayal in fantasy as I know it's often not the best, but honestly she COULD have been a awesome character and instead she was weak and crap!!! Disappointing!
Moving onto another point, the main viewpoint character is called Rob and I felt as though he was probably the least developed for me of them all which is ridiculous as we see mostly from his pov. The reason I say he's the weakest in terms of development is because all he does is adore the other character of Karyl and praise him... very tedious and boring to read after a fair few times!!
Karyl and Jaume are basically the same except Karyl has no conscience and Jaume is all about being a nice guy. They're both 'awesome' in everyone else's eyes and they both know exactly how to fix any dire situation at the last minute. Very predictably they're both going to 'win' at whatever they do.
Finally the last main character is Falk and he's the only one who actually interested me by the end of the book as the rest I had really given up all hope of redemption for. He, at least, has a fairly interesting plot which at the end of the book does do some more interesting stuff (if still not that original).
This book also over-uses profanity and rape etc massively. I have no problem at all with swearing and such in books because I read a lot of it and it takes a LOT for it to affect me. This book is so blasé about throwing swear words and horrible characters about that it just got annoying and silly. Unfortunately when profanity is overused it really doesn't even have an effect when actual bad stuff is happening and so this book had very little 'shock' factor in terms of events or language.
Equally it's not beautifully written or anything like that and it seems as though almost every chapter and paragraph was mostly 'he slashes this dinosaur which is super terrifying and scary and manages to kill it with ease because he's super cool' which is just ridiculous... Dinosaurs are made out to be SO terrifying, and yet by sitting on top of a small and nimble one you seem able to take down even the most terrifying beastly dino in a few blows... Come on!!! Really?!
Now moving onto the plot. This is called the Dinosaur Lords. We get little to no mention of the real history of the world or how Dinosaurs have been trained to co-exist with humans meaning that not only is it instantly unbelievable, but kind of disappointing. We then meet our characters and see them ride into an initial battle on Dinos and save the day (kind of cool when you're first starting the book). From this point on, however it's all confusion until about the halfway point. We have trouble knowing who is who and what on earth they are trying to achieve or who they work for. There are some crazy moments of long political debates which are dull as we have no idea who is who and nor do we feel invested in the story yet or care, and also we then have a fair few scenes of 'training up' recruits and some random acts of magic. NONE of this has really got anything to do with Dinosaurs, they are probably the smallest focus of the whole book, woefully underdeveloped and certainly not anywhere near as badass or cool as they should have been.
I don't really have the energy to keep on talking about this but suffice to say every moment it could have redeemed itself it didn't and the ending more infuriated me than made me want to proceed with the next one (so naturally I won't be). This book is further from Jurassic Park and Game of Thrones than pretty much anything else in Fantasy in that every troupe and every rubbish idea you can think of is sadly used and I just did not think it worth recommending to anyone (particularly if they like Dinosaurs and don't want them to be totally crappy as they are in this!).
Honestly I have nothing against the author himself, but this book just wasn't a book I enjoyed for anything and I personally can find very little to praise. I read this with a lot of others and no one found it easy to understand or to give a good rating to, so I don't feel too bad about this review, but it's probably the worst review I have ever given to a book on here. 1* is more than I wish I could award this. I don't think it's worth reading at all sadly...
I wanted this book to be good so badly...Don't get me wrong, the premise is awesome, the world is pretty cool (As a Latina, seeing all the Spanish was kind of fun) but the characters...the story...I'm sorry, Victor Milan. Specifically, please treat your female characters as characters and not objects. Have you ever heard of the lamp test? If your character can be replaced by a lamp and the plot is unaffected, then you fail. Unfortunately, most of your female characters felt more like lamps than anything else. That being said, this is the first book in the series, so despite my apprehensions I'll probably come back for more (Because who can really resist knights on dinosaurs?)
adventurous
lighthearted
tense
medium-paced
2.5 Stars - I loved the unique concept of this book, with dinosaurs and humans coexisting in a medieval Spanish-esque realm, but the execution was lacking. I think the major problem was that the world-building came across as more of an info-dump, in which characters deviated from the storyline to explain the background, before jerking the reader back to the present, making the plot difficult to discern. Plus there's a LOT here that wasn't explained yet, such as the gods, fey and Angels and how they all relate. The dinosuars were the best part from Shiraa trying to find her mother to the etchings heading each chapter to the brutal T-rex executioner; thus, the best characters and storyline in my view was Rob and Karyl, the dinosaur lords whipping a peace-loving army into shape. I wanted to love Princess Melodia, the one female protagonist, because of her agency, but she didn't do much besides pout and complain. Meanwhile, the "hero" Jaume and the "villain" Falk were both quite boring with murky motives. I may pick up the sequel someday when I recover from my disappointment.
Title sounded interesting enough to pick up, but it was weird. I won't be continuing this series. It's definitely not for me. Plot was all over the place. Tried to hard to be fantasy or scifi. I don't think the book could decide what the genre was going to be.
This will be a conflicted review, because I am really of two minds when it comes to this book. It is a lush, wild, and sprawling fantasy epic set in an intoxicatingly rich alternate world, but I also found it problematic. Good stuff first: I LOVED Karol Bogomirsky and his storyline with Rob, the dinosaur master. Everything about that storyline felt vivid and real and engaging: the mystery of Karyl's "deaths", his "rebirth" with Rob, his amazing and somewhat mysterious prowess in battle... this was the storyline I wanted to stick with. I also everything in the book that dealt with dinosaurs: the way they just exist like animals in this world, the way they are used as beasts of burden and beasts of war, the way they are part of human life. (I wished for more of Shiraa, Karyl's lost allosaurus: I'd read a book all about her!)
I was also intrigued by the Grey Angels and the 8 creators: I wanted more of that, too. I'm guessing more will be forthcoming in future books.
Now, for the less good. I just could not connect to the storyline concerning princess Melodia and her lover Jaume, and whatever else was happening at the royal court. To me, those parts of the book felt forced and plodding, as if the plot and story were getting lost in the corners of this magnificently sprawling alternate world. I found myself skipping through those parts, just to get to the next tidbit about Karyl. Every character here felt less real, less alive than Rob and Karyl (or Shiraa).
If I was reviewing the parts of the book that concerned Karyl and Rob and Shiraa and the dinosaurs, I'd give this book 5 stars. Everything happening at court, and with Jaume and the other royals and nobles... I'd give that 3 stars. So, I'll give the book as a whole 4 stars. I will definitely be reading the next installment in this series, and that's a review in itself I suppose!
I was also intrigued by the Grey Angels and the 8 creators: I wanted more of that, too. I'm guessing more will be forthcoming in future books.
Now, for the less good. I just could not connect to the storyline concerning princess Melodia and her lover Jaume, and whatever else was happening at the royal court. To me, those parts of the book felt forced and plodding, as if the plot and story were getting lost in the corners of this magnificently sprawling alternate world. I found myself skipping through those parts, just to get to the next tidbit about Karyl. Every character here felt less real, less alive than Rob and Karyl (or Shiraa).
If I was reviewing the parts of the book that concerned Karyl and Rob and Shiraa and the dinosaurs, I'd give this book 5 stars. Everything happening at court, and with Jaume and the other royals and nobles... I'd give that 3 stars. So, I'll give the book as a whole 4 stars. I will definitely be reading the next installment in this series, and that's a review in itself I suppose!
I struggled with this book -- lots of characters, and I didn't really care for the European setting. In fact, the only thing that kept me going to page 200 was the dinosaurs. I didn't particularly care for the human characters, and the only one I wanted to find out more about was Shira, a large raptor who had been raised by one of the main characters.
As I kept reading, I found that I was skipping lots of paragraphs to move forward, and then I found out that the author had his main female character raped -- total deal breaker for me. Not the way I want the female character motivated or treated by an author. That's lazy and insulting writing.
As I kept reading, I found that I was skipping lots of paragraphs to move forward, and then I found out that the author had his main female character raped -- total deal breaker for me. Not the way I want the female character motivated or treated by an author. That's lazy and insulting writing.
Didn't get around to finishing this one. I'm used to fantasy books that split the story between several different character perspectives, but the problem was that I just didn't care about any of the narrators. The world seems like it was created out of fantasy genre mad libs and I just can't.
As with most Fantasy worlds, they take some time to really understand and get into. I just had a hard time adapting to the world of this book. The character description/ development and environment just wasn't there for me. I really didn't care about any characters until about halfway through the book. With that being said, the battles were written brilliantly and gave me perfect visions. Plus, there were dinosaurs eating, thrashing and stomping people. Being the first in a series that is continuing this year, I'll probably keep reading the series, as sometimes a fantasy series takes two or three books into a series to really develop what it's going to be.