Tyrannosaurs carrying three-barreled bazookas!

That is all.

Okay, maybe not all. That would be too short for a proper review, but if the world were a fair place, that's all that would need to be said about Love in the Time of Dinosaurs by Kirsten Alene.

To start with, the author builds an entire world populated by what we assume are probably humans, although at times I questioned this. The unnamed hero of the novel is a warrior monk fighting off an invasion of heavily armed dinosaurs. Is this Earth's unknown past? Its future? My take is that it's an entirely mythical world, but this is open to interpretation.

In this world, all dinosaurs, or Jeremies as they're referred to by the monks, are vicious killers. Even dinosaurs that have traditionally been considered herbivores will kill and devour people, such as the stegosaurus that ate the hero's best friend. That is until the hero catches a glimpse of a previously unseen dinosaur (a trachodon) who is peaceful, intelligent, and also a monk, something that the humans believe is impossible since all dinosaurs are animals to them. Armor-wearing, gun-toting, samurai-sword wielding animals. This trachodon is a female named Petunia, and the two are instantly drawn to each other. Hence the “love” part of the title. It's almost a Romeo-and-Juliet star-crossed lovers kind of deal, except that instead of Verona, it takes place on a world invaded by dinosaurs, and Tybalt is a stegosaurus with cannons mounted on his back.

There are only two complaints I have with this novel. The first is that it feels like there's more to tell. I know that I say this a lot when reviewing books from the Eraserhead Press label, but this is really the case here. It feels like there is a large chunk of the overall story missing, such as why the dinosaurs are called Jeremies, why the half-badger spiritish animals are called Steves, and where the dinosaurs came from and why they attacked. This last one is a question that seems to be creeping around in the back of the hero's mind, but is never answered, and there are hints dropped that there is definitely something going on here. But it's never fully pursued. Maybe the author will write a sequel which explores this, particularly as this whole war seems to center around the one monastery and the surrounding area, and we don't see the much of the rest of the world. There's a myth in the book surrounding islands floating at the center of the planet with one old man and one old woman on each one who never meet, and of the Great Destroyer Jeremy. If this has to do with something larger, I would like to read it.

The second problem is more of a pet peeve, that being the author completely ignores basic physical (not to mention physiological) laws. At one point, a character who has been cut in half, and generally seems to be okay if only a little upset at losing his lower half, opens his ribcage up after jumping with the hero from a pterodactyl in order to become a parachute and slow their descent (did you get all that?). I can understand and accept some stretching of basic physical principles, but when they're completely broken like that, it rips me off the page and restores disbelief. Others may be more accepting of this, but unfortunately, I just can't do it. It's not in my nature.

Still, Love in the Time of Dinosaurs is a good read. It can be surprisingly deep at times, and Kirsten Alene has an interesting and unique writing style. Her imagery, not to mention her prose, can actually be quite poetic. The novel can also be very gory, so interested readers should keep this in mind before they start reading it, aside from the above issues I mentioned. Because of those aforementioned issues, I can't say that I loved the book. However, I can say that despite those issues, I still really did like it, and I feel comfortable in giving it a solid recommendation.

Love in the Time of Dinosaurs earns four out of five stars. ( )

What's not to love about dinosaurs with guns fighting genetically altered warrior monks? This is a well realised setting, quite unlike anything I've read before. ( )

Dinosaurs are pretty freaking cool, right? They are massive, they are tough, and they ruled the ancient world before the humans came around. Well guess what? They are the cock of the walk once again, and the humans don't stand a chance.

Not only do they have tough skin and massive, sharp teeth, but they are still huge and they carry MACHINE GUNS. Oh yea. Big. Freaking. Guns. They even strap cannons to the biggest ones. Now you may ask why they need these guns. Because they are bad ass. That's why. End of story.

Now, we come into this story near the end of a war between the Jeremys (cool freaking dinos) and the monks/humans. Our hero of the story is one tough dude. He can sit there and watch his parter get bit in half, and he doesn't freak - no. Not this guy. He is envious his partner no longer has any equipment getting squished as he sits on the branch. Dude is tough. But as we all know, every tough guy has a soft spot.

Mr. Monk falls for a special lady, but not just any lady. Little lady friend is a dino. The enemy has stolen his heart. But she isn't a weapon slinging, meat reeking killer Jeremy. She is a peace loving, not eating his best friend type of dinosaur. And the twist comes in when they try to figure out how they can stop a war that has lasted for 20 years.

I really love a good dino book. Kirsten did a great job not only writing a great dino book, but knocking it out of the park - bizarro style. We had action, and ripped off appendages, gun slinging reptiles and monks with bionic parts. The only thing that would have made it any better would have been pictures. Who doesn't want to see a brontosaurus strapped with a giant cannon??

This NBAS author has caught my attention, and I can't wait to read more of her work! ( )

I'm starting this review with an apology to Ms. Alene, the author. A couple days ago, when I was knee deep in this bizarro story of a monk who falls in love with a dinosaur, the very creatures he has dedicated his life to destroying, I saw a commercial for some BluRay thing or another and the movie shown in the ad was Avatar.

Try as I might, the visual of Avatar would not leave my head as I read this action-packed tale of a human (the monk) who falls in love with a blue creature (a trachodon). It didn't help that in many ways the basic storyline was quite similar. Those similarities end there, however. What Love in the Time of Dinosaurs has that Avatar does not is dinosaurs who tote weapons like machine guns, samurai swords and rifles that fire massive rotating saw blades, and also superhuman monks who can lose more than 50% of their bodies and continue to fight on. So suck it, James Cameron.

The thing I liked the best about this story were the little touches, like the monks' guns, which rendered dinos into hulks of smoking plastic shells. This made me think of the plastic dinosaur my son got from the Field Museum in Chicago this summer from one of those plastic dinosaur making vending machines. Like I said, nice, clever touches like that.

I will admit that Avatar was a fairly entertaining flick, but it would have vaulted into the awesome stratosphere if it had anything half as cool as a machine-gun carrying, grenade-lobbing Tyrannosaurus. So despite the similarities, Kirsten Alene wins this comparison with a heartfelt story that oozes the awesome. And the fact that the heros of the book, creatures formed by a union of the monks' meditative thoughts and badgers from the forest, are named The Steve, well, that was just the icing on top. ( )

The bare bones of the plot, without excessive spoilerage, are as follows: A monk, whose name we never learn, is also a soldier in a war against the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs, whom the monks refer to as Jeremy, came as a sort of plague when a mystical creature went into hiding. These creatures, called the Steve by the head monk, are of varied descriptions, among them fish-headed, winged cats and rhinos with rat heads. The Steve had many secrets and taught the head monk Zohar but when the dinosaurs came, the Steve left. And then the war with the dinosaurs began, with the monks acting as soldiers, trying to keep their walled-in monastery safe from the rampaging dinosaurs, who work together as a tactical army to defeat the monks. Alene’s unnamed monk manages to stay alive long enough to meet Petunia, a new breed of dinosaur, and he falls in love with her. Once his fellow monks clue into the purpose behind his solo visits into the forest, they threaten the love that has come to sustain the monk. Can the monk and Petunia survive the warfare around them? Will they be forced to choose sides? Not gonna tell you, of course. Read my entire review here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/love-in-the-time-of-dinosaurs-by-kirsten-alene/ ( )