319 pages
Published 1996
Read from February 5 to February 10
Rating: 2 out of 5
* Denotes a reread.
Such is the sad state of dinosaur fiction that Alan Dean Foster, mercenary page-filler and franchise novelist, treats us to better prose here than we find in most novels I’ve put under that tag. Which isn’t to say it’s good prose. It’s workmanlike at best, often belaboring us with over-description. It’s the sort of storytelling that gives adverbs and introductory clauses a bad rep. Yet Dinotopia Lost’s prose still comes out ahead of Cretaceous Dawn, The Sky People, and especially Triassic. (But then, I’ve read Facebook comment sections better written than Triassic. Less misogynistic, too.)
I read Dinotopia Lost sometime around 2002, and don’t recall a single thing about it. To be fair to my past self, there just isn’t much to remember here. The Prehistoric Pulp blog describes it as “Treasure Island [thrown together with] a lighthearted Jurassic Park,” but I have to disagree; that sounds so much more interesting than what we get here. It is, in fact, astoundingly dull.
The actual plot is “What if some meanies came to utopia?” But the pirates, and the narrative, get distracted by other matters before the idea can be explored. The characters, despite pages of physical description, never develop greater depth than a cardboard standee. And bereft of James Gurney’s iconic artwork, it turns out that talking dinosaurs don’t interest me all that much. The one exception, a Deinonychus ascetic who studied martial arts and wishes to meditate his way out of samsara, arrives too late to make much difference. (It also illustrates the broad stereotypes Foster traffics in.)
Still, I’ve read so many worse things. Especially where dinosaurs are concerned. At least the dream of the nineties is alive in Dinotopia.
