Dinotopia Lost by Alan Dean Foster
Book review
Dinotopia Lost was the first book I bought with my own money. I've re-read the story periodically over the years, and though it is a beloved childhood favorite, it's also a finely wrought science fiction story with beautiful writing and a hopeful message.
Here are some of my favorite passages from the book:
Whole tree trunks sent down rivers or torn free from squall-scoured shores tumbled and snapped in the waves. Teak from Siam and mahogany from Java, mangrove from Sumatra and bamboo from Borneo, marked the leading edge of the tempest, riding the breakers like jackstraws. There were clusters of leaves, dead fish stunned to the surface by the fury of the churning debris, a forlorn handmade fishing net ripped from its moorings, and whole rafts of coconuts bobbing in the swell like so many abandoned punctuation marks in search of a paragraph.
Spread out before them was a wondrous panorama that not even the odor of death could diminish. It was a place of great peace and calm, of regeneration as much as disintegration. A site of leave-taking and new beginnings, of rebirth and recycling. Many were the man or woman who would have gazed upon that scene and seen only desolation, but Smiggens saw Nature in all its intricacy and wonder, hard at work, remaking the world.
Although they did not know it, there was not one of the great meat-eaters lurking in the vicinity of their camp but half a dozen, and the crew of the Condor encountered them not in their nightmares but on the following morning, which was bright and filled with sunshine.
Should you find yourself in desperate need of a hopeful story, one that celebrates community, asks what it means to be civilized, and allows you to play with your inner child, add this novel to your shelf.Â
Best birthday money my 9-year-old self ever spent.Â
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Have you read Dinotopia Lost? Have a favorite passage to share? Tell me about your experience in the comments.
Happy reading!
<3 Fal
Hell yeah. Dinotopia ruled.