3/5 stars
Synopsis
Warning! This section contains spoilers, if you would like to avoid these spoilers, jump to the review below.
The book started with the narrator explaining how earth was dying, and so there was a mad rush to find a habitable planet and design ships that would be able to take people there. Then, there was an emergency when they got to the planet, so they had to quickly evacuate to the planet. However, when they did, they realized that there were dinosaurs.
The main character, Caleb, had to go on a mission with some other soldiers. The helicopter they were taking for the mission crashed so they had to finish the rest of the trek on foot. The people were on a mission to recover a source of power from the crashed ship. They tried calling for help only to be told that they were on their own because the base had a power failure.
The people sheltered inside an old crashed ship for the night, and a T-Rex attacked, grabbing the main character’s friend and eating him.
The main character, Caleb, felt as if the other characters didn’t trust him to keep his nerve, and resented that.
During the trek through the trees, they got off course and were lost. So one of them decided to climb a tree and get a signal on the satellite radio they have. On his way down from the tree, he was startled by the sound of something dying in the forest nearby and slipped. He broke his leg. The injured guy couldn’t walk so he said he would stay behind to give everyone else a fighting chance at getting to the settlement.
The people went into a swamp because they were lost. A poisonous dinosaur attacked the general leading the group and he died. Then the T-Rex paid them another visit and they hid up a tree. The group decided to try and travel by day so they could have a better sense of direction, and then they were attacked by a type of pack hunting dinosaur. One of the people died.
There were only two people by this point. The main character took charge because he was the last soldier. They stumbled across a tank that the main character’s brother had been in when he had not returned from a mission. Then they realized that the pack hunting dinosaurs were coming and ran to the tank.
The main character tried shooting some of the dinosaurs but then bullets that weren’t his filled the air and he took cover. After the bullets stopped, he looked up and saw that it was his brother. His brother took them to the caves he had been living in.
The main character found alien writing in the caves, indicating that something else intelligent had lived on the planet.
The main character’s brother and another guy had survived in the wilderness for three months in a cave. They found the corpse of the thing that wrote on the walls. The only non-military person wanted to stay in the cave so she could study the writing. The guy who had survived with the main character’s brother said he would stay behind with her. The main character and his brother continued alone to the main base.
When the main character and his brother got to the settlement, they saw that there were two T-Rexes waiting for the power to go out completely so they could go over the electric fence and eat everyone. The main character’s brother said that they needed to draw the T-Rexes away from the gate. So they did.
Review
This book was definitely a wild ride. It was nice how things in the book seemed plausible. It did start to get predictable though. Especially when the members of the group were being picked off one by one. I could tell that the main character was going to end up as the leader.
I felt like this book moved too quick. From the first page it felt like it was a race to get to the end. It would have been better if the author slowed it down a little so the readers could get a better feel for the characters, the world, and the base. Especially the characters. I didn’t really start to cheer for the main character until the end because I was not emotionally invested in him. I didn’t care about the deaths of the people in the patrol because I didn’t know them.
A problem with the book moving so fast was it didn’t feel like the characters had genuine relationships with each other. The author didn’t take the time to build up the characters or their relationships. While reading, I felt like one of the side characters had more of a relationship with a case of dead human embryos than she did with the characters around her. She had more of an emotional reaction to the dead embryos than the dead party members.
The book reminded me of Jurassic Park a little too much. I don’t like the movie, and the book felt too much like the movie for me to enjoy it fully.
Another issue I had with the book was the main character didn’t do anything. He just followed the group of people around. He didn’t try and do anything for himself, and he was always acted upon. I don’t feel like he grew, and even when he had to take charge, he was immediately saved by his brother and his brother was in charge more than him. I also don’t feel like the main character grew because I could see the author’s hand forcing him into different situations. The events in the book didn’t feel natural.
The ending of the book was okay. I don’t feel like it was a satisfying payoff to the rest of the book. The characters were rushing to get a power core back to the settlement so they could be protected from the dinosaurs, and they saw that there are two of the T-Rexes outside of the settlement. I was confused by this. Earlier in the book, the author said that the T-Rex was territorial, so there was one per territory. Why were there two outside of the settlement then? I don’t believe that they would have just been waiting patiently together for the food to become available. Solitary predators don’t want to share food usually. And if they were smart enough to know that the settlement’s power was dying, why would they chase after one person who was trying to lure them away from the greater food source? If they were smart enough to know that the power was about to go out, wouldn’t they also be smart enough to recognize what baiting is? The ending just didn’t make sense to me.
One good thing was that the book didn’t drag. It had good levels of tension throughout the entire book.
That being said, the falling action part of the book felt way too…abrupt. The people found a safe place to live, and the tension suddenly died. It would have been more natural if the tension throughout the book stopped occasionally to give the reader a small breather.
Also, the ending seemed to be too good to be true. The people moved into caves that the dinosaurs didn’t go into, or even near. Granted, the author did set up earlier in the book that the dinosaurs didn’t go to that area, but it felt too convenient for me. Why didn’t the dinosaurs go there? They certainly could. And I don’t believe that they didn’t go there just because there weren’t any trees to hide in. It just felt a little too good to be true.
Fireheart Books 