Buy or borrow this book! Support your local independent bookseller
Find it in a WorldCat library
Compare prices at major online bookstores
|
|
In 1993, lovers of science fiction and fantasy around the world were introduced to James Gurney when his book, Dinotopia, became a publishing sensation, winning award after award. The success of the book and its sequel, The World Beneath, wasn't the result of some fad that quickly fades; no, both books are artistic and storytelling triumphs, combining the adventure of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World with the mystery and moral consciousness of Jules Verne's Mysterious Island, but with an altogether modern sensibility.
In Dinotopia Lost, Alan Dean Foster, a superlative fantasy fiction writer himself, creates an adventure in the world of Dinotopia for adult readers. This then, is Dinotopia--an island deep in the uncharted reaches of the Indian Ocean, surrounded by treacherous currents and a ship-grinding reef, where any explorer who attempts to find safe harbor is inevitably fated to remain. It is a land where dinosaurs never became extinct but instead grew intelligent, developed their own high culture, and created a unique civilization in concert with the stranded seafarers who found their way there. Roman and Phoenician and Egyptian, Chinese and Mayan and Polynesian, Spanish and English and American--all have found their way to Dinotopia, including, at the time of our story, shipwrecked sailor Arthur Denison and his son Will.
As the story begins in Dinotopia Lost , it's been six years since Denison and Will arrived, and they have been assimilated into Dinotopian culture. The island is bracing for a terrible storm, the culmination of a centuries-old cycle. When one of the storm's waves deposits an intact pirate ship within the deadly ringing reef, events threaten to upset the delicate nature of Dinotopian culture.
The brutish pirates, unaware of the intelligent nature of the island's antediluvian inhabitants, kidnap a dinosaur family, and young Will Denison must lead a desperate expedition into the dangerous Rainy Basin, the realm of the meat-eaters, in order to rescue them. What follows is an adventure Doyle or Verne would love.
Alan Dean Foster has had much success adapting movies to novels, including the Star Wars and Alien films, so the process of working from an existing imaginary world is not new to him. Presented with a fully realized world, with well-formed characters, he takes these elements and builds on them, bringing forth a creation entirely his own. Those unfamiliar with Dinotopia will quickly learn the background of the island lost in time. I must say, though, that a familiarity with Gurney's books would greatly add to enjoyment of the novel--Gurney's pictures are really wonderful.
Dinotopia is a gold mine of stories, especially those that have yet to be told, and this novel is a testament to the genius of James Gurney's creation. In Dinotopia Lost, Alan Dean Foster has told just one of those stories, and it is a delight. I hope there will be more to come in the future.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.