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taserface 's review for:
The Dinosaur Lords
by Victor Milán
I picked this book up because the cover is amazeballs, and one of the stars is the cover alone. The other star is for the illustrations inside the book, and some of the fights, which were pretty cool.
C'mon, it's a book about people fighting wars on dinosaurs...how can it not be AWESOME?!?!?!
I have no idea how you can manage to make that boring, but somehow Victor Milan did . So a round of applause for him, I guess?
This was just a jumble of petty squabbles, confusingly written battles (who am I rooting for again?), drab court intrigue and poorly fleshed-out and wholly uninteresting characters, one of which could have been removed from the book altogether, and it wouldn't have made a difference. Can you guess which one? If you guessed the female lead, you get ten points! The other three characters are all variations on the "awesome warrior dude who is also very handsome and has feelings...sort of". The nobles and "bad guys" were pompous and unconvincing, and more annoying than menacing.
The dinosaurs...WHERE WERE THE FUCKING DINOSAURS?! They hardly have any screentime, and when they do it's always disappointing.
The world-building is perfunctory at best. For a place that is definitely NOT Earth, it sure does seem a lot like Earth. There are different religions, and mythologies and superstitions, and they all get tossed about willy-nilly. There are gods, angels, demons, fairy-folk and magic all just sort of stuffed in between everything else. How does it all work? I DON'T KNOW!!
The Emperor is a dolt who starts wars on a whim. I still don't really now what the whole Army of Correction was about...
And what's with all the raping? People are being raped left and right like it's going out of style. When I say "people" I of course mean "women", usually peasant women, and they aren't really people, right?
I have a small suspicion that Milan might hate women...
"Strong" women in particular.They really get the shit end of the deal in this book. A strong, brook no-nonsense kind of woman appears on the page - on the next page she has been raped and killed/left for dead
See, the Creators decided to put one kind of people, the nobles, above all other people, and it is their god-given right to treat the lesser folk exactly how they want. What's a little raping and murdering for sport, eh? The knights of Nuevaropa (spelling?!) call that a regular Saturday.
But harming a knight, or any kind of noble is a sin, see? That'll bring fire and brimstone down on your head... unless you're a woman of course.Not even the Emperor's daughter (one of our main characters) is safe. She is built up to be this awesome, kick-ass warrior princess, but spends most of her time pining, weeping or gossiping. And when this girl, who is very capable of defending herself we are told over and over, finally meets her fate (something she's been destined for since Milan first put pen to paper because she is a female character) she cries out with...frustration ...I mean, what the ever-loving fuck?!
Like "Blimey, getting an unwelcome visitor through my back door wasn't really on my agenda today!"
Yeah...nah.
That's just poor writing, imho. Especially when these things happen, and aren't really spoken of again.
The men get stabbed, cut, broken arms, broken ribs, trampled by dinosaurs, stoned to death etc. The women get...dick. Just uninvited dick. Why?
I think it's sad when sexualized violence against women in books doesn't even surprise me any more.
The dinousaurs had feathers, though, and that was pretty cool.
C'mon, it's a book about people fighting wars on dinosaurs...how can it not be AWESOME?!?!?!
I have no idea how you can manage to make that boring, but somehow Victor Milan did . So a round of applause for him, I guess?
This was just a jumble of petty squabbles, confusingly written battles (who am I rooting for again?), drab court intrigue and poorly fleshed-out and wholly uninteresting characters, one of which could have been removed from the book altogether, and it wouldn't have made a difference. Can you guess which one? If you guessed the female lead, you get ten points! The other three characters are all variations on the "awesome warrior dude who is also very handsome and has feelings...sort of". The nobles and "bad guys" were pompous and unconvincing, and more annoying than menacing.
The dinosaurs...WHERE WERE THE FUCKING DINOSAURS?! They hardly have any screentime, and when they do it's always disappointing.
The world-building is perfunctory at best. For a place that is definitely NOT Earth, it sure does seem a lot like Earth. There are different religions, and mythologies and superstitions, and they all get tossed about willy-nilly. There are gods, angels, demons, fairy-folk and magic all just sort of stuffed in between everything else. How does it all work? I DON'T KNOW!!
The Emperor is a dolt who starts wars on a whim. I still don't really now what the whole Army of Correction was about...
And what's with all the raping? People are being raped left and right like it's going out of style. When I say "people" I of course mean "women", usually peasant women, and they aren't really people, right?
I have a small suspicion that Milan might hate women...
"Strong" women in particular.They really get the shit end of the deal in this book. A strong, brook no-nonsense kind of woman appears on the page - on the next page she has been raped and killed/left for dead
See, the Creators decided to put one kind of people, the nobles, above all other people, and it is their god-given right to treat the lesser folk exactly how they want. What's a little raping and murdering for sport, eh? The knights of Nuevaropa (spelling?!) call that a regular Saturday.
But harming a knight, or any kind of noble is a sin, see? That'll bring fire and brimstone down on your head... unless you're a woman of course.
Like "Blimey, getting an unwelcome visitor through my back door wasn't really on my agenda today!"
Yeah...nah.
That's just poor writing, imho. Especially when these things happen, and aren't really spoken of again.
The men get stabbed, cut, broken arms, broken ribs, trampled by dinosaurs, stoned to death etc. The women get...dick. Just uninvited dick. Why?
I think it's sad when sexualized violence against women in books doesn't even surprise me any more.
The dinousaurs had feathers, though, and that was pretty cool.