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Summary: Life will never be the same again...
Review: The whole world goes back to a wilder time when dinosaurs appear on earth. While the President tries to figure out how the fix an unfixable problem, people throughout the world are forced to cope with some perplexing and unexplainable...guests.James F. David skillfully introduces the reader to several scenarios where people are faced with finding ways to survive often in their own backyards, while a plethora of animals from another time move in. "Footprints of Thunder" will entertain you as well as challenge your assumptions about the future.
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Summary: The Laws of Dino-Fiction
Review: There are unwritten rules to writing good dinosaur fiction, which sadly not many writers know about. They are as follows: -Do some actual research on the subject other than flipping through a dinosaur encyclopedia published in 1987. -Dinosaurs were not monsters, so do not refer to them as such. -If you're going to write about dinosaurs, then look at decent pictures first. Animals cannot have lips when their jaws were covered in keratin, i.e. a beak, there are no known theropods with "bony collars," and PTERANODON DID NOT HAVE TEETH. Deliberately vague descriptions are a sure sign you haven't a clue about your subject matter. -South American prosauropods never interacted with Mongolian ceratopians. -An adult Mussasaurus was probably around ten feet tall; not exactly tiny. This book breaks all these rules. While it's reasonably entertaining as a natural disaster book (despite the repugnant New Age psuedoscience garbage that serves as a basis for its plot), as a work of dino-fiction it's painfully bad.
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Summary: Great premise, horrible finish
Review: This book description on the cover had me really interested at first. I will give the author credit for writing great action sequences. The first part of when the world began to adjust to the "change" was really interesting and how the characters dealed with it seemed promising, but the whole thing eventually turned sour. Characters that at first seemed very real quickly turned flat b-movie caricatures the moment they were put into dangerous situations, their decisions completely unbelievable or the ultimate cliches. Even the dinosaurs turned out to be unbelievable because the author gave most of them human characteristics.
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Summary: Dinos and bikers
Review: This book is full of action and it keeps you interested until the end, But its at the end when you realize how much was left unfinished. Like a bad episode of the X-files, it leaves the veiwer (in this case the reader) with absolutely no closure. The extent of the plots left abandoned and the questions left unanswered are so numerous no 1000 word review would come close to covering it. It is clear the author, James F. David, did not set out to write a compelling action novel about the consequences of Dinosaurs interacting with Humans, but rather used this as an excuse to vent his cynisism and frustration over modern society. Just to make sure you know how ticked off he is, he leaves the reader "hanging" at the end, hoping we will join him in his angst. Thank you, no. I will simply forget these past two days and remember never to pick up another one of his novels again. Incidentally, the two stars were given becasue it is well written and at least in regards to the creatures themselves, very descriptive. Also, the action begins early and continues to the end. Call me old fashioned, though. I like a novel that ties up its loose ends. When the reader is purposely left unfulfilled, it ruins the experience for me. For that, I cannot recommend this book.
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Summary: A Nice ride, but . . .
Review: This book is full of action and it keeps you interested until the end, But its at the end when you realize how much was left unfinished. Like a bad episode of the X-files, it leaves the veiwer (in this case the reader) with absolutely no closure. The extent of the plots left abandoned and the questions left unanswered are so numerous no 1000 word review would come close to covering it. It is clear the author, James F. David, did not set out to write a compelling action novel about the consequences of Dinosaurs interacting with Humans, but rather used this as an excuse to vent his cynisism and frustration over modern society. Just to make sure you know how ticked off he is, he leaves the reader "hanging" at the end, hoping we will join him in his angst. Thank you, no. I will simply forget these past two days and remember never to pick up another one of his novels again. Incidentally, the two stars were given becasue it is well written and at least in regards to the creatures themselves, very descriptive. Also, the action begins early and continues to the end. Call me old fashioned, though. I like a novel that ties up its loose ends. When the reader is purposely left unfulfilled, it ruins the experience for me. For that, I cannot recommend this book.
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Summary: A terrific suspense of unreal reality
Review: This book was written so well. David makes the reader believe that anything is possible. He mixes the past with the present and makes it believable. I definitely enjoyed reading this book. I reccommend to anyone that likes action and thiller all in one this is a book for you to read! My favorite part of this book was the connection between the old lady and the iguanodon. This book is pacted with different events, some that have actually happened in real life, that I love to read about. All in all, it was a great book, except for the ending. It could have been longer.
Rating:
Summary: A terrific suspense of unreal reality
Review: This book was written so well. David makes the reader believe that anything is possible. He mixes the past with the present and makes it believable. I definitely enjoyed reading this book. I reccommend to anyone that likes action and thiller all in one this is a book for you to read! My favorite part of this book was the connection between the old lady and the iguanodon. This book is pacted with different events, some that have actually happened in real life, that I love to read about. All in all, it was a great book, except for the ending. It could have been longer.
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Summary: Excellent debut from James F. David
Review: This is James F. David's first novel and what an original winner. Through unexplained events in time and space, prehistoric animals and prehistoric jungles suddenly start appearing in our world of the 20th century. As the giant beasts hunt for humans and roam the ravaged cities, humanity must find a solution to reverse these unexplained events. A great book with great characters, writing, story line and concept.
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Summary: A difficult book to wade through.
Review: This novel has a great premise...very original. However, therewere too many characters and events which makes it choppy and hard tofollow. I would be getting into one group of character's plight only to be dropped out of the sky into another group's plight. Most time, I had to stop and think back to who these characters were and what had happened to them last. It made for very tedious reading. If I could have read the novel in one sitting, it might have been different. Also, the dinosaurs were hard to visualize because they were not named by their scientific name and described. Everyone has rudimentary knowledge of dinosaur names, so why weren't they used. Calling them "monsters" sounded goofy. After literally forcing myself to finish this novel, I found the end extremely disappointing. I felt like the author was given a finite number of pages to write this novel and when he got close to the end, he just ended the story; it would have been better to cut out some of the other character gro
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Summary: Unusual and exciting dinosaur novel...
Review: This one always gets compared to Jurassic Park, sometimes its accused of ripping it off based on the fact that they both have dinosaurs and people interacting. Other than that the stories are pretty different and I believe that the dinosaur meets human premise has a lot more possibilities to explore. Is it better than Jurassic Park though? Footprints of Thunder does have better characterization, and an unexpected and better ending which even manages to create a sense of dramatic irony. I'd say they're about equal as far as the excitement factor goes, but David creates human characters who are just as bad, if not worse, than the dinosaurs giving extra thrill factor to the story. It is also less predictible, in JP you pretty much knew who was going to live and die, but David gets more of a reaction when he suddenly kills off characters you have grown to care about. Both books have terrific and very different premises, FoT's premise is wildly brilliant but implausible while JP's is brilliant and chillingly plausible. Also Crichton seems to know his dinosaurs better. David names very few of the species and I was often asking "What the heck was that thing?" Of course he can always use the excuse that these animals may have existed back then and not be on the fossil records, who can disproove him? And since the characters aren't dinosaur experts, how could they identify them? Still a lack of dinosaur knowledge seems to show throughout many of the book's scenes. But he does seem to know a lot about Oregon, right on, James! So as to whether or not its better than JP, who cares? Both of them are worth reading.
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