Stormchaser wants to escape her starved, grey life. Lincoln wants to save his dying sister. Their only chance is to join an expedition to a deadly country to steal the eggs of vicious dinosaurs. If they succeed, their reward is a new life filled with riches. But in a land full of monsters - both human and reptilian - only the ruthless will survive. Jurassic Park meets The Hunger Games in this epic new series.
Untitled
And there we have it, my first DNF for the year.
I know that this is my sort of thing, like seriously:
Dinosaurs - Check ?
Dangerous trials - check ?
Love triangle (as far as I could tell) - check ?
Did I mention DINOSAURS??
And if I had read it 10 years ago I would have read through it in a day, I know I would’ve but I’m not 14 years old anymore and I’m now realising how much of a book snob I am. The writing was very young, like not even just the writing style, like the print was larger than what I’ve been reading lately as well and that should’ve been a dead giveaway. The storyline however made me second guess whether I could finish it.
In Earthasia, it’s hard to house the population of humans, let alone find soil hasn’t been built on or overused to grow fresh crops other than a grey tasteless fruit/vegetable called cornup, and even that discovery had cost the lives of countless people boating across oceans infested with all sorts of menacing dinosaurs, such as the Megladon. The government was now hosting trials to find suitable candidates to trek into Piloria, where only the nastiest of carnivores made their homes, but also where fresh bountiful land waited to be taken. The candidates were to take eggs from T-Rex’s, velociraptors and pterosaurs so that their scientists could use the dinosaurs DNA to figure out their weaknesses and wipe them out. For good.
Enter female lead - Stormchaser Knux - orphaned girl, forced to live in the ‘Shelter’ where all the other orphans are housed, with hobbies of being outdoors and swimming in a Loch with a dinosaur that she believed saved her life when she had been diving to explore underwater caves. Storm (for short) enters the trials because she’s aware they will be feeding the successful Trialists the best food they had on reserve to keep up their strength, and even then, her best friend Dell had a lot of coaxing to do(unwitting love interest/life long friend so also friend zoned eternally in her eyes) especially seen as given her friendly history with her swimming dinosaur friend, she’s none too eager to start wiping out the dinosaurs, at least not all of them.
Enter male lead - Lincoln Kreft- with no real health system apart for those that had high end jobs, a plague runs rampant through Earthasia and devastatingly for Lincoln, his little sister Arta was dying from it and his mother seemed to be starting to contract it from her as well. The only way to save her would be for Lincoln to become not only one of the successful Trialists but to also come back victorious with each of the eggs, ensuring he and his family would be given the best medical treatment the government could buy when he returned. Only as soon as he spots the stubborn, but quite able Stormchaser Knux, he can’t help but lose focus in her violet eyes........
And that’s where you lost me S M Wilson.
14 year old me would have been like YAAAAASSSS PURPLE EYES I AM DOWN FOR THIS, EVERY SIM THAT I MAKE NOW IS GOING TO BE CALLED STORMCHASER AND THEYRE ALL GOING TO HAVE PURPLE EYES YAAAASSSS.
But 24 year old me was like ah f**k. Because yes, while I know it’s a fantasy world where dinosaurs roam around alongside humans, it’s not a fairy book. Or a vampire book. Or any other kind of mythological creature book. Dinosaurs were actual reptiles that walked the earth and even while I feel silly saying it like this.....it just didn’t click for me, also with the instant attraction and distraction between the two mains it just read very young to me.
HOWEVER I did not finish this book (like I didn’t even get 90 pages through) and I mean, if Stormchaser was actually embued with some kind of magical abilities which gave her the marker of purple eyes then I solemnly apologise, because girl with magic powers and purple eyes in a world filled with dinosaurs, boy yes, that’s something I can get behind. But without any background evidence that magic exists in this world, those violet eyes just threw me off.
All in all, the storyline for the book was awesome, I really wish I could’ve pushed through but there were just a few too many times that I felt myself being thrown off by a phrase or something the characters would say to each other that make me like ‘well you just met, you think you should be opening up like this?’. I would strongly recommend this book for teens because like I said, 14 year old Hannah would’ve eaten this up, but 24 year of Hannah is discovering her book snobbery and not just anything with a cool storyline is going to cut it anymore ?? - Hannah (QBD)
Guest, 02/10/2019
