The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milán
Published July 28, 2015
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 445
Source: Bought it
Men and women live on Paradise, but dinosaurs predominate. Colossal plant-eaters like Brachiosaurus, terrifying meat-eaters like Allosaurus, and, the most feared of all, Tyrannosaurus rex rule the land.
Seeking to centralize real power in his figurehead Fanged Throne, Emperor Felipe of Nuevaropa sets off a chain of wars that may blaze up to consume the continent called the Tyrant’s Head. But is Imperial ambition the only spark, or are more sinister forces at work?
And so we have as our players: Fallen hero Karyl Bogomirskiy, who gets lured into the quixotic task of raising an army from a province of pacifists. Part-time dinosaur master and minstrel and full-time rogue Rob Korrigan, who wants to get paid and laid–but he follows the man he’s written and sung about into what looks like certain disaster. Princess Melodia, who is eager to escape the shadow of her indulgent but neglectful father, the Emperor. And Imperial Champion Jaume, Count of the Flowers, the Empire’s most celebrated swordsman and poet, who wants to serve Beauty and the right. But what can he do when faced with two equally wrong and ugly choices?
In The Dinosaur Lords, dinosaurs roam free in Paradise. As political tension increases, Emperor Felipe of Nuevaropa, who is currently sitting on the Fanged Throne, decides to wage war through the land, to solidify his claim to the throne.
In this book, we follow three main characters: Melodía, the daughter of Emperor Felipe and one of the only people who dare contradict him and challenge his beliefs; Rob, a dinosaur master who has recently lost his job and Karyl, a living legend who is tasked, along with Rob, with an impossible task.
I’ve seen this book being compared with Game of Thrones and, to a certain point, it is true. There’s a lot of intrigue and hidden political plots but that’s about it.
One of the strongest aspects of this book was world-building. There was a lot of detail put into it. The characters were also fleshed out and it was fun to follow different sides of the events. What I think hindered my enjoyment of the book was the story. It had a really good concept but I think it could have been better executed. I still enjoyed it but it could have been so much better! I had a problem with the pacing and certain plot points were hard to follow. There was a big battle in the beginning where I was not familiar with Milán’s writing nor the characters so I didn’t retain a lot of it. In the rest of the book, parts of this battle were brought up and I had to go back and read the beginning to finally understand what the characters were referencing.
Stil, I’ll continue on with the series. I already have the next book and hopefully I’ll get to it soon.
Rating: 3.5 stars
“Careful what you wish for, lad, Rob thought. Blood’s not so easy to put back in, once you let it flow. Your own no more than anybody else’s.”
every book counts 