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A review by yegua_blanca
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World by Riley Black
2.0
The story seems familiar, almost banal: great fearsome creatures, all wiped out by an even more fearsome, more destructive hunk of rock. A few tentative mammals survived and began to thrive. The meek inherited the earth.
In her book, The Last Days of Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World, Riley Black sets out to enrich this story and bring it to life. She uses a narrative style, developing characters out of organisms that have been dead for millions of years. Her objective is ambitious: to retell the story of the famed extinction and the life that emerged in the next million years. Amidst this larger story, we are given snapshots of organisms trying to survive as Black attempts to inject as much life as she can into her book. She dedicates a great deal of pages to the ways organisms interacted with their environments during the drastic changes caused by the asteroid impact; these glimpses are representative of wide-ranging and extreme changes to ecosystems.
Black’s enthusiasm and love for dinosaurs is evident. She writes about organisms that are long extinct with a sense of wonder, painstakingly incorporating details of their life history and ecology into narrative-style writing. This works better in some cases than others. The story is at its best when Black writes about the interactions between organisms, using their actions to show, not tell. When she turns her focus away from a single organism and writes about the interactions between changing plant, animal, and arthropod communities, the narrative proceeds at a brisk and interesting pace. At these points, we begin to get a story that feels organic, as Black seamlessly integrates facts about the environmental conditions and the biology of the organisms with her narrative. However, much of the time, this writing feels clunky. Black often relies on methods of info-dumping facts in the midst of an organism’s story. The action comes to a stuttering halt and reading feels like a slog at those moments. Enthusiasm on its own cannot make a compelling story. In fact, Black’s enthusiasm can exacerbate the problem, as she expounds on details that feel like unnecessary tangents. Amidst these smaller clunky stories, the book feels at times like a loose collection of facts rather than the overarching story of life after extinction. The broad scope of the book demands a tight, careful focus in order to create a narrative. The tangents deal a significant blow to the creation of this narrative.
Though this book has its weak points, I believe it is a compelling read for those who already have a strong interest in paleontology and dinosaurs. The language is accessible for people who do not have a background in science, and the book contains a passion and love for life at its core. Black’s lucid, life-affirming perspective informs every facet of her work. Black goes beyond the doom and destruction trope of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that the asteroid caused. Rather, her story is a celebration of life and its resilience. She illustrates the extinction as an end and beginning: “the conclusion of the dinosaurs’ story, [and] a critical turning point in our own.”
In her book, The Last Days of Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World, Riley Black sets out to enrich this story and bring it to life. She uses a narrative style, developing characters out of organisms that have been dead for millions of years. Her objective is ambitious: to retell the story of the famed extinction and the life that emerged in the next million years. Amidst this larger story, we are given snapshots of organisms trying to survive as Black attempts to inject as much life as she can into her book. She dedicates a great deal of pages to the ways organisms interacted with their environments during the drastic changes caused by the asteroid impact; these glimpses are representative of wide-ranging and extreme changes to ecosystems.
Black’s enthusiasm and love for dinosaurs is evident. She writes about organisms that are long extinct with a sense of wonder, painstakingly incorporating details of their life history and ecology into narrative-style writing. This works better in some cases than others. The story is at its best when Black writes about the interactions between organisms, using their actions to show, not tell. When she turns her focus away from a single organism and writes about the interactions between changing plant, animal, and arthropod communities, the narrative proceeds at a brisk and interesting pace. At these points, we begin to get a story that feels organic, as Black seamlessly integrates facts about the environmental conditions and the biology of the organisms with her narrative. However, much of the time, this writing feels clunky. Black often relies on methods of info-dumping facts in the midst of an organism’s story. The action comes to a stuttering halt and reading feels like a slog at those moments. Enthusiasm on its own cannot make a compelling story. In fact, Black’s enthusiasm can exacerbate the problem, as she expounds on details that feel like unnecessary tangents. Amidst these smaller clunky stories, the book feels at times like a loose collection of facts rather than the overarching story of life after extinction. The broad scope of the book demands a tight, careful focus in order to create a narrative. The tangents deal a significant blow to the creation of this narrative.
Though this book has its weak points, I believe it is a compelling read for those who already have a strong interest in paleontology and dinosaurs. The language is accessible for people who do not have a background in science, and the book contains a passion and love for life at its core. Black’s lucid, life-affirming perspective informs every facet of her work. Black goes beyond the doom and destruction trope of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that the asteroid caused. Rather, her story is a celebration of life and its resilience. She illustrates the extinction as an end and beginning: “the conclusion of the dinosaurs’ story, [and] a critical turning point in our own.”