Reviews

Dinotopia, a Land Apart from Time: 20th Anniversary Edition by James Gurney

b_mcintosh's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

teganbree's review against another edition

adventurous lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

alysian_fields's review against another edition

adventurous lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.0

rvoeller's review against another edition

adventurous inspiring lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

eileenmccoy's review

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

5.0

xandra_lyn's review

hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Such an imaginative and beautiful work!! 

elisetheninth's review

adventurous hopeful medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

This book is just as enchanting to revisit now as it was to visit for the first time decades ago. The artwork is incredible and so detailed it really does feel like you might fall into some of the two-page spreads! I love the foundation of this world, too - there's something really gentle and lovely about it.

amylynn44's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful inspiring lighthearted 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? No

5.0

snazel's review

4.0

Beautiful and incredibly fun story and illustrations, but it's interesting how early-90s this feels. I can't see such a pacifistic (vegan!) utopia flying in the era post 9/11. It's so hopeful. We just decided to leave systemic prejudice and injustice behind and moved on to utopia! Yeah, that doesn't ring quite true.

It's an interesting indictment that the social utopia is the part which I find most unbelievable, not the talking intelligent dinosaurs.

mal_eficent's review against another edition

adventurous informative lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

I grew up on the TV miniseries and always wanted to grab the book, but could never find it. Now I have it, I regret not getting it sooner!

For some reason, I was expecting this to be more of narrative book – instead it follows the journal entry style of classic adventure stories (like Edgar Rice Burroughs, for example) and uses mostly illustrations to pad out the text. The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous, so I'm hardly complaining, but it makes it pretty short and lacks a lot of the world building I was looking for. Weird thing to say when this is entirely the recordings of a scientist discovering a new world and goes into a lot of detail...I'm just greedy. I will probably just treat this as an artbook in the future, but the story is equally lovely and worth the time. 

Honestly, if you're a fan of world building, fantasy/sci-fi illustrations, and DINOSAURS, this is absolutely worth grabbing.