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2.89 AVERAGE
2.89 AVERAGE
An interesting premise, the book suffers a tad in its execution. I'd give this a 3.5 if I could because I did enjoy it, but some of the politics were hard to follow, especially the bit at the end. It sets up book two for big events though.
The book is written to feel like this world is in the middle ages except for the dinosaurs. There are all types on this world and many are domestigated and trained. It's really cool to envision men riding dinos into battle, but it falls tad since i's hard to keep track of the types of dino's even when a short blurb in front of each chapter is designed to help players determine what their purpose on the world is. I really liked the short pictures above each blurb, but I suspect there is no correlation between the picture and the blub.
In the end, it does have me interested in tracking down the next novel...
The book is written to feel like this world is in the middle ages except for the dinosaurs. There are all types on this world and many are domestigated and trained. It's really cool to envision men riding dinos into battle, but it falls tad since i's hard to keep track of the types of dino's even when a short blurb in front of each chapter is designed to help players determine what their purpose on the world is. I really liked the short pictures above each blurb, but I suspect there is no correlation between the picture and the blub.
In the end, it does have me interested in tracking down the next novel...
I read this and reviewed it I think...maybe I did so against a different edition.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I don't know what I was expecting, but this was surpsingly solid. I could pass on the multiple plots and focus just on Karyl and Rob, but the other plot lines are serviceable and do a lot of the world building. I love dinosaurs and medieval fantasy so this was right up my alley. Some of the characters are a bit 1-dimensional but the main bulk of the book balanced it out for me. Also love the potential hint of sci-fi for the world origin? I'll be reading the next two to see how it shapes up.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, War
Moderate: Rape
Minor: Classism
This book was such a fun, interesting experience!
There are knights, and wars, and gallantry, and betrayal, and motherfucking dinosaurs struttin' their stuff.
Yeah, like that guy.
This was a weird but ultimately well-crafted piece of fantasy. The setting is pretty much Middle Ages Spain, but not OUR Middle Ages Spain. I can't tell if it's just an Earth-like place, or the ever-popular "aliens built this place as a kind of Earth creature zoo." But either way there are lots of fine Spanish gentlemen riding goddamn triceratops into battle.
You know what, don't even listen to me. Listen to that little kid you still have in your head. That kid that lets out excited exclamations whenever you think about the gigantic reptilian titans who made this world their own far before we came and fucked the place up. That kid wants to read this book.
There are knights, and wars, and gallantry, and betrayal, and motherfucking dinosaurs struttin' their stuff.
Yeah, like that guy.
This was a weird but ultimately well-crafted piece of fantasy. The setting is pretty much Middle Ages Spain, but not OUR Middle Ages Spain. I can't tell if it's just an Earth-like place, or the ever-popular "aliens built this place as a kind of Earth creature zoo." But either way there are lots of fine Spanish gentlemen riding goddamn triceratops into battle.
You know what, don't even listen to me. Listen to that little kid you still have in your head. That kid that lets out excited exclamations whenever you think about the gigantic reptilian titans who made this world their own far before we came and fucked the place up. That kid wants to read this book.
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Okay, so... I'm not a big fan of fantasy literature. Or movies. Or... anything, really. Well, high fantasy, as I believe it's called. Whenever someone starts talking about dwarfs or orcs or, god forbid, Tolkien, I get a queasy feeling in the bottom of my stomach. I haven't really read any standard high fantasy in years and years and that's not about to change. I still loathe high fantasy.
Adding dinosaurs, however, will at the very least make me interested.
Unfortunately, that doesn't stop me from feeling incredibly torn on this book. Taking it for what it is, I can see that it's fine. Enjoyable even and like I said, add dinosaurs and I'll be intensely more interested. So also here, the addition of dinosaurs makes the story stand out to me, it more than anything drove me to read it even if I at times had a hard time continuing to read it. But any time the book strayed from the dinosaurs and started devling into political intrigue, it utterly lost me.
Hell, it wasn't even particularly good intrigue. It was the same rote scheming you see in any novel involving an Empire; someone craves power and maneuvers people around so as to get where they want to be, backstabbing and sleeping their way up the ladder. The main antagonist, of sorts, Falk was not a particularly compelling villain who flitted undecidedly between being a perfectly reasonable villain who lusted for power and a raping, violent, easily manipulated man-child. Not a single of the attempts to delve into him as a character resulted in anything other than him whining about his mother.
The rest of the novel is perfectly devoid of any sort of antagonism, save for a few nobles acting like I imagine all rich people do. One might say the world and its teaching is the antagonist and that would be fair... except the world is really not very well developed at all. It certainly lures you in with its dinosaurs and humans living together-thing but it doesn't really mine it for any sort of substance. Dinosaurs are for riding into combat and... well, that's about it, really. It kind of hints how they use the dinosaurs for every day purposes instead of horses for instance, how they breed them for specific colors and how it changes how people see nature.
But it never really does anything with it. The most interesting this aspect of the book gets is when it, at the beginning of each chapter, has a little blurb about what different dinosaurs do and what their names mean. And for all the attention it gets, the dinosaur combat got tedious real fast. That's another thing I really, truly dislike about fantasy; it's tendency to eventually end up in a huge battle. I've never read a single book that made this interesting or particularly good, it always ends up cluttered, confusing and not very compelling to read. This book definitely suffered from this to the point where I seriously considered just flipping through these pages to get to the end.
I never really feared for any of the protagonists lives so I wouldn't miss anything.
And I did say protagonists, plural, cause this book comes with a whole four protagonists, who come with their own little entourage of supporting characters I guess you're supposed to care for? But you don't. The only character in the whole book I felt remotely attached to was Rob, a traveling bard and dinosaur master, who actually seems to have a bit of fun every now and then, unlike all the others in this book who are scowling, unhappy wretches. I mean, Jaume praises life and beauty a whole lot but he doesn't seem to have all THAT much fun.
Speaking of something else I didn't like, can fantasy writers just... stop with this whole... rape thing? Or just sex in general? Cause, oh my god, unless you're an experienced porn writer, just... don't. Poorly written, vague and brief sex scenes do nothing, really. You don't need to spell it out, for that matter. Just hinting that they had wild, passionate sex will do the trick for most. This applies to the battles as well, for the record. You don't need to write in detail about the battles, just hinting and giving vague notions of what's going on is, in my opinion, better since it allows me to conjur up the images in my mind, detached from the often confusing process on the page.
But the rape thing is just... no. Just no. Can we just... not do this anymore? It's bad enough that the novel can't stop talking about how sexy and beautiful the women are, getting all caught up in how naked and sweating they are. I was genuinely uncomfortable at these parts, it's not really why I read these things (if it was sweating, sexy dinosaurs on the other hand...) and when characters started talking about or hinting at raping the princess, I nearly stopped reading. I've already heard the sequels become a bit iffy on this whole sex thing as well so... well...
I get that [a:George R.R. Martin|346732|George R.R. Martin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1351944410p2/346732.jpg] did a thing and now everyone wants to do that thing but good grief, stop it. (Yeah, I know there was rape and sex in fantasy before Martin but let's not pretend everyone who writes stuff like this now isn't trying to aspire to Martin's fame)
Despite all of this, though, I still greatly enjoyed the book... in parts at least. Whenever you just got to experience the characters doing things (not Jaume, though) or when it explained how this unique world worked or when it actually mined its cool setting for worth, the book was nearly impossible to put down. Rob and Little Nell's relationship was the one reason I found that particular character so endearing, he was the only character who actually did something you could only do in this world. Jaume only rode a dinosaur like it was a horse, Karyl did... well, nothing related to dinosaurs, really, and Melodia was useless and had nothing to do in the entire book except look pretty, have sex and be raped.
This supposedly gets cleared up and more interesting in future books and I feel like I'm already pretty set on reading those. But it's still hard balancing the good parts with the bad cause for every part I couldn't put down, there was one that urged me to put it down and not pick it up again. I'm probably just not the right audience for this sort of thing, the fact that I only picked this up because it said "dinosaurs" on the cover should clue that in.
Despite its unique setting, I think it still takes someone who's into the sort of fantasy popularized by [b:A Game of Thrones|13496|A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)|George R.R. Martin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1436732693s/13496.jpg|1466917]. I'm not necessarily it even if the dinosaurs do keep me interested. What I'm saying is... tread carefully.
Adding dinosaurs, however, will at the very least make me interested.
Unfortunately, that doesn't stop me from feeling incredibly torn on this book. Taking it for what it is, I can see that it's fine. Enjoyable even and like I said, add dinosaurs and I'll be intensely more interested. So also here, the addition of dinosaurs makes the story stand out to me, it more than anything drove me to read it even if I at times had a hard time continuing to read it. But any time the book strayed from the dinosaurs and started devling into political intrigue, it utterly lost me.
Hell, it wasn't even particularly good intrigue. It was the same rote scheming you see in any novel involving an Empire; someone craves power and maneuvers people around so as to get where they want to be, backstabbing and sleeping their way up the ladder. The main antagonist, of sorts, Falk was not a particularly compelling villain who flitted undecidedly between being a perfectly reasonable villain who lusted for power and a raping, violent, easily manipulated man-child. Not a single of the attempts to delve into him as a character resulted in anything other than him whining about his mother.
The rest of the novel is perfectly devoid of any sort of antagonism, save for a few nobles acting like I imagine all rich people do. One might say the world and its teaching is the antagonist and that would be fair... except the world is really not very well developed at all. It certainly lures you in with its dinosaurs and humans living together-thing but it doesn't really mine it for any sort of substance. Dinosaurs are for riding into combat and... well, that's about it, really. It kind of hints how they use the dinosaurs for every day purposes instead of horses for instance, how they breed them for specific colors and how it changes how people see nature.
But it never really does anything with it. The most interesting this aspect of the book gets is when it, at the beginning of each chapter, has a little blurb about what different dinosaurs do and what their names mean. And for all the attention it gets, the dinosaur combat got tedious real fast. That's another thing I really, truly dislike about fantasy; it's tendency to eventually end up in a huge battle. I've never read a single book that made this interesting or particularly good, it always ends up cluttered, confusing and not very compelling to read. This book definitely suffered from this to the point where I seriously considered just flipping through these pages to get to the end.
I never really feared for any of the protagonists lives so I wouldn't miss anything.
And I did say protagonists, plural, cause this book comes with a whole four protagonists, who come with their own little entourage of supporting characters I guess you're supposed to care for? But you don't. The only character in the whole book I felt remotely attached to was Rob, a traveling bard and dinosaur master, who actually seems to have a bit of fun every now and then, unlike all the others in this book who are scowling, unhappy wretches. I mean, Jaume praises life and beauty a whole lot but he doesn't seem to have all THAT much fun.
Speaking of something else I didn't like, can fantasy writers just... stop with this whole... rape thing? Or just sex in general? Cause, oh my god, unless you're an experienced porn writer, just... don't. Poorly written, vague and brief sex scenes do nothing, really. You don't need to spell it out, for that matter. Just hinting that they had wild, passionate sex will do the trick for most. This applies to the battles as well, for the record. You don't need to write in detail about the battles, just hinting and giving vague notions of what's going on is, in my opinion, better since it allows me to conjur up the images in my mind, detached from the often confusing process on the page.
But the rape thing is just... no. Just no. Can we just... not do this anymore? It's bad enough that the novel can't stop talking about how sexy and beautiful the women are, getting all caught up in how naked and sweating they are. I was genuinely uncomfortable at these parts, it's not really why I read these things (if it was sweating, sexy dinosaurs on the other hand...) and when characters started talking about or hinting at raping the princess, I nearly stopped reading. I've already heard the sequels become a bit iffy on this whole sex thing as well so... well...
I get that [a:George R.R. Martin|346732|George R.R. Martin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1351944410p2/346732.jpg] did a thing and now everyone wants to do that thing but good grief, stop it. (Yeah, I know there was rape and sex in fantasy before Martin but let's not pretend everyone who writes stuff like this now isn't trying to aspire to Martin's fame)
Despite all of this, though, I still greatly enjoyed the book... in parts at least. Whenever you just got to experience the characters doing things (not Jaume, though) or when it explained how this unique world worked or when it actually mined its cool setting for worth, the book was nearly impossible to put down. Rob and Little Nell's relationship was the one reason I found that particular character so endearing, he was the only character who actually did something you could only do in this world. Jaume only rode a dinosaur like it was a horse, Karyl did... well, nothing related to dinosaurs, really, and Melodia was useless and had nothing to do in the entire book except look pretty, have sex and be raped.
This supposedly gets cleared up and more interesting in future books and I feel like I'm already pretty set on reading those. But it's still hard balancing the good parts with the bad cause for every part I couldn't put down, there was one that urged me to put it down and not pick it up again. I'm probably just not the right audience for this sort of thing, the fact that I only picked this up because it said "dinosaurs" on the cover should clue that in.
Despite its unique setting, I think it still takes someone who's into the sort of fantasy popularized by [b:A Game of Thrones|13496|A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)|George R.R. Martin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1436732693s/13496.jpg|1466917]. I'm not necessarily it even if the dinosaurs do keep me interested. What I'm saying is... tread carefully.
The concept for this series had me hooked, and I think the execution was pretty good. Of the three main storylines, I thought Princess Melodia's was the weakest, since she spent most of the book enjoying the luxuries of the castle but complaining about how no one ever took her seriously. The Rob/Karyl storyline was the most fun, combining a character who despises but nevertheless depends upon the noblemen, with a character who has forsaken his former life as one of the nobility. Some of these themes carried over into the Jaume storyline, with the noblemen under Jaume's command repeatedly demonstrating how poorly-deserved their privilege really is.
The most disappointing part of the book for me was the ending, which seemed a bit abrupt insofar as none of the main storylines were resolved. Melodia's story was taking a turn for the better, though, which makes me look forward to the second installment.
The most disappointing part of the book for me was the ending, which seemed a bit abrupt insofar as none of the main storylines were resolved. Melodia's story was taking a turn for the better, though, which makes me look forward to the second installment.
Medieval fantasy with dinosaurs. Politics and pages and pages and pages of battle sequences. Lots of unanswered questions and no resolution...but of course there are two more books. Milán is not a bad writer but he needs to be more economical in his prose (I partly blame publishers for this as well.) There were bits I liked, but they were few and far between, and it is too much of a slog for no reward.
(3.5 stars)
I received this book as a gift from my boyfriend :D
Writing
The writing has a strong personality? I mean I would be able to distinguish this style among others, though it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why... Something to do withe sentence structure. It’s is rather fluid and pleasant though.
Story
There’s no clear objective set at the beginning of the book. It’s more like a slice of life thing, but lots of stuff is happening so you’re never bored.
World
The good: dinosaurs everywhere. The less good: the fact that it’s not earth but there are lots of winks to languages or countries, and it gets a bit old. (Francia, for example, for France)
Characters
There are lots of characters, and at first it’s hard to understand who’s a main character and who’s less important. I mean it’s good because all the characters are developed, but it’s also a bit annoying at the beginning because it’s confusing.
Conclusion
This book has defaults, but the concept is interesting enough to carry the reader through! I liked it a lot, even though its dense contents made it a long read. I will definitely read the next one, and I do recommend to people a bit bored with conventional fantasy.
I received this book as a gift from my boyfriend :D
Writing
The writing has a strong personality? I mean I would be able to distinguish this style among others, though it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why... Something to do withe sentence structure. It’s is rather fluid and pleasant though.
Story
There’s no clear objective set at the beginning of the book. It’s more like a slice of life thing, but lots of stuff is happening so you’re never bored.
World
The good: dinosaurs everywhere. The less good: the fact that it’s not earth but there are lots of winks to languages or countries, and it gets a bit old. (Francia, for example, for France)
Characters
There are lots of characters, and at first it’s hard to understand who’s a main character and who’s less important. I mean it’s good because all the characters are developed, but it’s also a bit annoying at the beginning because it’s confusing.
Conclusion
This book has defaults, but the concept is interesting enough to carry the reader through! I liked it a lot, even though its dense contents made it a long read. I will definitely read the next one, and I do recommend to people a bit bored with conventional fantasy.