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Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara
Feb. 7th, 2010 15:19Hey Wilmington, you might want to plow the streets on which, y'know, people live. IJS.
So as you might have been able to predict, my Delaware adventure to hear James Gurney speak was not accomplished successfully. I still intend to go see the exhibition of his Dinotopia art at some point, though. (Side note: I haven't been to Delaware, as a destination, since 1998, and now I've gone twice in the past two weeks.) I loved Dinotopia as a kid; I almost decided to become a paleontologist because of Dinotopia. What young geek doesn't love dinosaurs? I was not immune to their awesomeness, anyway. So when I found the newest Gurney Dinotopia book (Alan Dean Foster wrote some prose-only novels, at least one of which I read), Journey to Chandara, for $4.99 in Borders last fall, I bought it immediately.
Gurney, James. Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel, 2007.
I still think Gurney's first book, Dinotopia, is his best. That said, though, Journey to Chandara, which features the adventures of Arthur Denison and his friend Bix the protoceratops ambassador as they adventure across the island to the usually closed Empire of Chandara, might be stronger than The World Beneath. Certainly there are a lot of cool anecdotes in this book--I think my favorite part is the starsailors, waiting with their ships for the end of the world--as well as more up-to-date science than in the earlier books, as is only natural. The biggest thing here scientifically speaking is probably the prominence of avian dinosaurs; Arthur and Bix encounter a lot of them, both those that can speak human tongues and those that can't, but who are intelligent enough to communicate nonetheless. Dinotopia itself is obviously a utopia, where dinosaurs and humans of all colors get along more or less peacefully, but for precisely that reason it still tugs at my heartstrings in the same way it did when I was in grade school. By the same token, though, I notice Gurney's philosophy poking through more now than I did when I was a child, and I like it; I particularly liked the ending. There are always more things to learn.
So as you might have been able to predict, my Delaware adventure to hear James Gurney speak was not accomplished successfully. I still intend to go see the exhibition of his Dinotopia art at some point, though. (Side note: I haven't been to Delaware, as a destination, since 1998, and now I've gone twice in the past two weeks.) I loved Dinotopia as a kid; I almost decided to become a paleontologist because of Dinotopia. What young geek doesn't love dinosaurs? I was not immune to their awesomeness, anyway. So when I found the newest Gurney Dinotopia book (Alan Dean Foster wrote some prose-only novels, at least one of which I read), Journey to Chandara, for $4.99 in Borders last fall, I bought it immediately.
Gurney, James. Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel, 2007.
I still think Gurney's first book, Dinotopia, is his best. That said, though, Journey to Chandara, which features the adventures of Arthur Denison and his friend Bix the protoceratops ambassador as they adventure across the island to the usually closed Empire of Chandara, might be stronger than The World Beneath. Certainly there are a lot of cool anecdotes in this book--I think my favorite part is the starsailors, waiting with their ships for the end of the world--as well as more up-to-date science than in the earlier books, as is only natural. The biggest thing here scientifically speaking is probably the prominence of avian dinosaurs; Arthur and Bix encounter a lot of them, both those that can speak human tongues and those that can't, but who are intelligent enough to communicate nonetheless. Dinotopia itself is obviously a utopia, where dinosaurs and humans of all colors get along more or less peacefully, but for precisely that reason it still tugs at my heartstrings in the same way it did when I was in grade school. By the same token, though, I notice Gurney's philosophy poking through more now than I did when I was a child, and I like it; I particularly liked the ending. There are always more things to learn.
