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mars2k 's review for:
informative
slow-paced
There is a passage from this book (from pages 187-188 specifically) about the Chicxulub impactor, describing in detail the size and speed of the asteroid as well as the untempered devastation it inflicted on the Cretaceous Earth. I first read it about two years ago and it’s stuck with me ever since. I decided this year to read the original text, hoping the rest of the book would be as mind-blowing as that small fragment had been. Unfortunately it didn’t quite meet my (perhaps unreasonably) high expectations.
The meandering prose is a slog at times – a problem which isn’t helped by the overly long chapters. There were certainly some interesting parts here and there, but there was far too much padding around them and reading ended up feeling like a bit of a chore. I got tired of the global warming message pretty quickly. That’s not to say climate change isn’t an important topic to discuss – it absolutely is – but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Brannen was using that framing to make the book seem more “relevant” to audiences that otherwise might not care about prehistoric mass extinctions. In my case at least, he was just preaching to the choir (which wouldn’t be so bad were it not interrupting the actually interesting stuff)
I may be a little disappointed but my feelings about the book still lean positive overall. I learnt a considerable amount, I can’t deny that. I probably won’t reread it cover to cover but I’ll definitely leaf through it at some point and revisit some of the fantastic quotes. One in particular has wormed its way into my skull and set up camp: “a lone wandering pronghorn still running from ghosts.” Hauntingly beautiful.