Loads of fun and excitement with more pulp-style adventure and derring-do than I've read in a while. Plus, psychic dinosaur-men, intelligent apes conquering NYC, time/space travel by ley lines, and more!

If none of that sells you on this book, it's definitely not the book for you.

I'm just ashamed it took me so long to finish this, but that's my personal issue with Kindle/ebooks--I don't have a physical book and bookmark around to taunt me into finishing the book when it's only existing as another file in an overloaded ereader. ( )

Or Disappointing Us Now as I have re-titled it.

It appears that Wendig has a background in the games industry and that this book is based on a tabletop roleplaying game.

This is seems to make sense considering Wendig's strengths and weaknesses as a story teller as evidenced here.

The big plus is imagination.

The big minuses are everything else:

Writing style, characterisation, plotting.

The single sentence paragraphing is really irritating so I will stop inflicting it on you now, but you will have got the idea. It's like he was never taught the function of a paragraph. The Jane Austen half a large page of small print paragraphs I've subsequently been reading are muchly superior. As is the characterisation. Wendig seems to think one stereotypical trait and another stereotypical motivation is sufficient - for any and all characters. Nobody here is anything but a one dimensional cliche and redundant love triangles that don't affect the plot don't help. There are also too many protagonists, so that after an initial sequence that hangs together well, we are led off into a swamp of different locales and characters that is difficult to wade through. It comes together eventually for a decent enough finale that is then thrown away on an enormous cliff hanger that prevents anything at all being resolved. There's also a certain amount of Luggage Syndrome.

The thing that prevents this falling squarely into one star territory is that one strength mentioned above: imagination. The whole idea behind the roleplaying game is the recreation of the spirit of the pulp adventure stories that are exemplified by such things as the Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Sherlock Holmes and Allan Quartermain books. Recreation with an added heavy dollop of self-aware silliness, that is. In this the book succeeds and it creates some wonderful visual imagery that made me think this would work better as a graphic novel. Bad prose would be both less obvious and less of a problem and the crazy visuals (e.g. dinosaurs and lizard men, talking gorillas and other primates, giant gem-like gates to somewhere else) would be emphasised although the plot structure and characterisation would be unaffected. Just look at the cover to see what I mean - a book full of that kind of thing would be entertaining.

Ultimately, though, as a novelist, Wendig fails (at least for me); I'm only likely to read Beyond Dinocalypse, the inevitable sequel, if it more or less falls into my hands, which is unlikely considering that the books are published by an indie outfit branching out from its game making core business. The idea of playing the game this is inspired by appeals to me more - and if you consider this one giant advert for that game, well, in that, Wendig perhaps succeeds. ( )

Loads of fun and excitement with more pulp-style adventure and derring-do than I've read in a while. Plus, psychic dinosaur-men, intelligent apes conquering NYC, time/space travel by ley lines, and more!

If none of that sells you on this book, it's definitely not the book for you.

I'm just ashamed it took me so long to finish this, but that's my personal issue with Kindle/ebooks--I don't have a physical book and bookmark around to taunt me into finishing the book when it's only existing as another file in an overloaded ereader. ( )

I listened to the audiobook, primarily because it is read by Oliver Wyman, who is one of my very favorite narrators. Wyman did a good job of making the book far more entertaining than it would have been otherwise.

This reminded me a lot of the movie "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" - same early-20th-century setting, same kind of comic book gadgets and violence, same kind of nonsensical monsters.... but Sky Captain was much much better. This isn't bad, but... the world-building is a little flimsy. There don't seem to be any rules to this world, or of there are, Wendig is making them up has he goes along. The characters are all very flat and stereotypical. It's just a bunch of action, and although it's fun, there's not much thought involved in the creation or the consumption of the story. ( )

This book went straight onto my to-read pile earlier this year, for two main reasons: first, because I love Chuck Wendig, and second because...well, I figured I couldn't go wrong with any book with a title like Dinocalypse Now!

It wasn't until I was halfway through reading this book that I started to do some research and found out a little more about its background. Crowd-funded through Kickstarter in 2012, Dinocalypse now is based on Evil Hat Productions' Spirit of the Century role-playing game, which is set in a 1920s/30s-era pulp adventure world. With this information in mind, dare I say, this wild ride featuring jetpacks, talking gorillas, psychic dinosaurs, and ancient Atlanteans finally all came together for me!

It begins when a group of heroes calling themselves the Century Club are brought in to prevent the assassination of FDR, only to find that the president isn't the target -- they are! Though, what comes next is actually a threat to the entire planet as King Khan the ape conqueror storms this world through a dimensional portal, leading his vast army of primates and dinosaurs. Now it's up to the Centurions to stop him and save the world!

I won't lie, I was very much entertained by this book. It is escapist fiction that captures the pure, unadulterated spirit of pulp. Given how characteristics like bigger-than-life heroes, beautiful women, high adventure/action in exotic places, and evil diabolical villains are the hallmarks of this genre, it wouldn't be wrong to say Dinocalypse Now is all about sensationalism over substance, but I still can't deny I had a lot of fun.

Picture a kid with an overactive imagination in a toy store, and the stories he can come up with in his head if he played an elaborate game of make-believe while surrounded by miniature buildings, animal plushies, plastic dinosaurs, action figures and toy weapons. You'll probably get something like this book. Chuck Wendig probably had a blast writing this.

In a sense, it's likely that the sheer absurdity of this book will also be its greatest appeal. I am completely aghast but also delighted by this its craziness and eccentricity. There is a place in my heart for books that are just completely out there and don't take themselves seriously, and while I didn't enjoy this one as much as Chuck Wendig's other novels, this was still a good one to pick up to pass the time. ( )