Dinosaur Summer

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Summary: Not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but . . .
Review: I bought DINOSAUR SUMMER hoping to be transported to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World, but ran off to join the circus instead. It took some time for me to accept the hokey notion that if dinosaurs were re-discovered on earth, they would be nothing more than sideshow acts in a circus and people would lose interest in them. I doubt it.

I can't help comparing this to DINOSAUR WARS, another recent dinosaur science fiction offering, and first of a series. In that saga, the entire world is beset by dinosaurs and the human characters are trapped by events beyond their control. The fate of humanity is at stake. Furthermore DINOSAUR WARS' dinos are realistic depictions of known Cretaceous critters, not arbitrary creations like Bear's Venator. This means you can learn about Pachyrhinosaurus, Megaraptor and such while reading a scary and exciting adventure story. Hopp's Professor Ogilvey matches Doyle's Challenger in wit, and exceeds him in hilarity. Bear's Shellabarger and other circus and Hollywood types don't quite cut it, though not bad. Bear's addition of a kid is a good element. On the other hand, the hero of DINOSAUR WARS, Chase Armstrong and the heroine, Kit Daniels, make a convincing romantic pair who add to the overall beauty of the read -- women were almost totally lacking in DINOSAUR SUMMER, as in THE LOST WORLD. DINOSAUR WARS mixes males and females in roughly equal proportions -- rare, for an adventure story.

I thought DINOSAUR SUMMER was an enjoyable book, but whatever you do, don't miss DINOSAUR WARS and the new sequel, COUNTERATTACK.

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Summary: I couldn't believe dinosaurs could be so boring!
Review: I don't know about the Lost World that Bear refers to, but this is certainly a lost opportunity! To get to the 60 pages or so of reasonably exciting (if predictable) material, the reader is condemned to plough through a couple of hundred pages of less-than-riveting scene setting. Furthermore, in setting the story in 1947 Bear demands that the reader should suspend disbelief to an uncomfortable degree, in order to accept this alternative 20th century history. The purists won't like this either, as Bear populates his story with a bestiary of various fantastic hybrid creatures that don't exist in any fossil record. This book is clearly a belated attempt to jump onto the Jurassic Park bandwagon, and whilst JP did get a bit silly in places, I think most readers would find it a vastly more credible and enjoyable read than Dinosaur Summer.

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Summary: More dinosaur action would have been nice
Review: I never thought Dinosaurs could be so boring. In this book the author set out to create a world where dinosaurs were mostly taken for granted. In this respect, unfortunately, the book was a great success. There were so many opportunities in the story for something really exiting to happen, more specifically for a dinosaur to do something. Anything. The main attraction of a book about dinosaurs, in my opinion, is getting a sense of what those enigmatic creatures were like. In "Dinosaur summer", in the few descriptions of actual dinosaurs (and not made up birdy monsters), the author tells us only that the creature did this or that, or went here, or jumped up there, like we're supposed to know what that's like. This book had nice pictures though. Also, if your a fan of Ray Harryhausen's work (or those other real life guys incorporated into the story) you might get an extra kick out of this book. Unfortunately, I didn't know who the hell any of these guys were and! although the pictures were nice I think this book would be a dissapointment for any fans of Greg Bear and/or dinosaurs.

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Summary: a GREAT book to read...
Review: I think that Greg Bear's Dinosaur Summer is one of the best books I have read. I haven't read other books from Greg Bear, but I can already tell that he's an excellent writer. I think that the scenario is more realistic than ever cloning dinosaur DNA to make them (*cough* Jurassic Park *cough*). I like the animals and characters in the book. A great one, it's a must-read.

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Summary: My Least favorite Bear Novel
Review: I was extremely dissapointed with this book. It lacked excitement and characters I could care about. This was a poor attempt at 50's juvenile science fiction, sorry Greg. The book came across so unrealistic that I just couldn't suspend my belief, which I am normally very good at.

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Summary: A delight
Review: I'm not surprised that this book has been underrated by many readers. It comes from another age, when Doyle and Burroughs were the hottest adventure writers around. It was a big challenge for Bear to satisfy the old hard-liner of "Lost World" but the "exercice de style" was achieved to the perfection. But don't be surprised if under the apparent naivete inherited from the Lost World a very clever, educated and gripping story is developping. After all, that's the Bear Touch.

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Summary: Dinosaur Summer is adventure in the great old-fashioned way.
Review: In what we are pleased to think of as our reality, such men as Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (producers of the 1933 KING KONG), special effects geniuses Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen, President Harry S Truman, and circus impresario John Ringling North, to name only a few, are-or, for most of them, at least were-very real. On the other hand, such men as George Edward Challenger are inhabitants of the vast realms of fiction-in this instance, Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 classic, THE LOST WORLD.

Now Greg Bear-author of such major SF novels as MOVING MARS, EON, / (Slant), and many others, provides in his new novel DINOSAUR SUMMER a world wherein our reality and Doyle's speculative adventure collided head-on and merged, eighty-six years ago, with the return from Venezuela of the Challenger expedition-complete with real, live dinosaurs. And the result is quite a reading experience. (An added bonus: the novel is illustrated, both with fine line drawings and excellent full-color paintings reflecting a style of illustration of over fifty years ago, by Tony DiTerlizzi.)

In DINOSAUR SUMMER it's 1947, and dinosaurs are passé; a world in which they still lived lost interest in them after only a few decades (unlike our world's continuing fascination with the creatures of a vanished epoch). The last dinosaur circus still extant is out of business, its facilities sold to John Ringling North, its last remaining sad living exhibits destined for an uncertain fate...until the National Geographic steps in, offering to fund an expedition to return the dinosaurs to the massive prehistoric plateau, the tepui of El Grande, known to the nearby Indians as the sacred Kahu Hidi. Along for the ride, to preserve this quixotic journey's high points on film, are movie expert Willis O'Brien, the young Ray Harryhausen, photographer Anthony Belzoni, and Belzoni's son Peter, the novel's focal character.

I don't want to give much away, but I can say that the first half of the novel moves relatively slowly but steadily, quietly getting under way; after the expedition at last arrives at the gateway to Kahu Hidi, events really start to rock and roll like a runaway train, hurtling toward a powerful and emotionally resonant conclusion. Greg Bear, in addition to considerable knowledge of his subjects (prehistory, history, politics, movies, people), obviously has great affection for them as well.

I must have read Doyle's LOST WORLD more than a dozen times when I was a kid, my favorite movie of all time may well be the '33 KONG, and I've seen every O'Brien and Harryhausen fantasy film many times since as a result, not to mention JURASSIC Park and its sequel. That said: for readers like me, DINOSAUR SUMMER-which despite its Bradbury-esque title contains significant (and by no means gratuitous) scenes of graphic violence at its climax, and is not really for younger kids-is a real treat, and one I expect to return to again. Like Doyle's novel and KONG, it more than fulfills Cooper and Schoedsack's Three Ds-"Keep it Distant, Difficult, and Dangerous"-in a way that happens all too rarely, a way I can really prize.

-Michael E. Stamm is a clerical worker in the English Department at the University of Oregon; he has been reviewing science fiction, fantasy, horror, and genre fiction for various publications for nigh onto twenty years now.

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Summary: coming-of-age story devlolves into bad Jurassic Park rerun
Review: Jurassic Park meets Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World in this unpretentious story about a group of adventurers returning circus dinosaurs back to the wild. The first half was a pleasingly poignant story, centered around a coming-of-age-story of a boy trying to understand his father. Much of this novel had the feel of a young adult story, in a good way; I could picture myself reading it to a young nephew someday. Unfortunately, once the adventurers released the dinosaurs into their native habitat, Jurassic Park broke loose. And so I read as quickly as possible to get to the end. P.S. The illustrations are keen.

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Summary: you will love this book
Review: Okay, yes some parts of this novel are predictable. Yes the characters are not as colorful as they could be. But this is still a great novel that really captures the sense of boyhood adventure. It is the kind of work that you finish and can't get the question out of your head: "Why the heck have I ended up setting behind a desk for the rest of my life?" You want to go out and become part of something grand, make yourself an adventure, discover your own metaphorical dinosaurs. And the fun part is that it does not ignore the people who gave of this gift: Doyle, O'Brien, Cooper, Harryhausen, etc. In fact, it is as much as homage to them as it is dinosaurs.

I recommend this book. While it may not be quite as good as Jurassic Park (the novel), it is much better than Crichton's The Lost World. Heck, its what Crichton's sequel should have been!

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Summary: Dinosaur Summer Should Go Back to School
Review: Since I love dinosaurs, I wanted to check this book out as soon as I heard about it. It tells the story of a boy and his father who accompany the last dinosaur circus to the Lost World, as previously discovered in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel of the same name, so that the remaining dinosaurs can be released into the wild. Society is no longer interested in the majesty and beauty of these creatures, and their lives in the circus is reminscent of the brutality and heartache of circus animals today. Unfortunately, the story doesn't fulfill its promise with a dragging plot, too many cardboard characters, and wasted energies. Tony Diterlizzi's artwork on the cover and within the text is the best thing about the book.