Customer Reviews

DINOSAUR PARK

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Rating: "A-" -- very cool, very Vanceian dinosaur-adventure tale.
Jack Vance fans shouldn't miss this one.

My copy of this had gone astray, so I picked up another at the used
bookstore the other day. I'd forgotten how Vanceian it is -- not really
a pastiche, it reads pretty much like a mid-period, mid-quality Vance
SF novel. 10-year old Kerryl Ryson pulls a prank that humiliates an
offworld grandee and starts a riot. As a result, his father is executed,
and Ryson and his whole clan are enslaved. Ryson grows up obsessed
with vengeance. He makes a galaxy-wide search for the Immaculate
Ultima of Aberdown, who ordered his father's death. Along the way,
he encounters exotic worlds, strange people, stranger religions, and
acquires a luxurious space yacht from one Baron Bodissey, in case
you're still wondering who the book reminds you of... Even Vance's
signature footnotes are here.

Ryson's search eventually brings him to old Earth, which has become
an extraordinarily reclusive, stratified world, with the arrogant,
aristocratic Palatines served by pallid, puling leperons, an artificial
human subspecies (another Vance trademark). He meets the
beautiful but troubled Yveena Soolis, and the tale is resolved with
some (somewhat) surprising revelations. Yes, dinosaurs are featured,
along with possibly the silliest explanation yet for their demise.

I really like The Thirteenth Majestral, and I'm pretty sure that you
Vance fans will like it too. Peirce's hommage to Vance is, well, just
about as entertaining and well-done as the real thing. Check it out.

Happy reading!
Pete Tillman

Dinosaur Park is a fun, pulpy, scifi adventure. Set in the far-flung future when humanity has colonized one end of the universe to the other, the story begins on a backwater planet where the feudal society of dinosaur ranchers is preparing for the annual spring festival, the March of Thirty-three Flowers. One 10-year old boy's childish prank (dosing a T-Rex with sneezing powder) kicks off a story of death, imprisonment, and thirst for revenge.

The main plot is a universe-spanning revenge tale with a protagonist who seems to have little control over his destiny. The story is well-written and action packed, especially in the second half. While the story builds up steam, we get immersed in a setting that is completely alien, and simultaneously, very familiar.

Much of the author's humor is expressed in proper nouns. Place names and people's titles are at first annoying and distracting in their silliness, but quickly become enjoyable for their consistency. For example, the story begins in the year 28,373 FIP, or the 28,373rd Flowering of the Indomitable Perpetuality, which is the newer way of counting time, contrasted with the OFR, or Old Fallacious Reckoning.

I found the story to be reminiscent of the one of my favorite scifi series, Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars. Meanwhile, Peirce's writing style reminded me of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, mostly in the way we are exposed to the expansive setting. It may be futuristic and alien, but it's still peopled with human beings and their foibles. The story is as much a travelogue of this incredible universe, as it is the story of one man's revenge.

While simply written, the tale is complexly layered, like a fine meal. All of the little details, like where the dinosaurs come from, the role played by the mysterious ancient race, and how our hero fits into the greater schemes of greater men, are woven together in a satisfying way.

This book was fun, interesting, and filled with dinosaurs. I highly recommend it.

How often does a novel that features death defying escapes, floods, explosions and a protagonist with as many lives as Bruce Willis in 'Die Hard' also have some of the most intricate and amusing time and memory paradoxes not seen since the days of 'Star Trek' or more recently 'The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'? A perfect blend of brawn and brain, muscle and science, whether you like action packed adventure or intergalactic space travel there is something for everyone in this epic tale of revenge, survival, romance...and dinosaurs.

The novel follows the story of a young boy named Kerryl Ryson who plays a childish prank on a malevolent dignitary that goes horribly wrong and is summarily forced to watch the execution of his father and enslavement of his entire race. The rest of the novel follows Kerryl's journey through deep space, backwards time travel and near death on numerous planets all in the desperate hopes of avenging his father's death and freeing his family from the bloodthirsty jaws of the dreaded Tyrannosaurus and his dastardly, pitiless keeper and part-time dignitary also known as the Immaculate Ultim of Aberdown.

It is advertised that the writing style of the book is intended to be a send-up to the style of author Jack Vance. Personally, never having read Vance's work, the novel's little idiosyncrasies annoyed me at first. For example, naming planets, places and races in Science Fiction is important when creating a new universe but such names as Mount Vomity, Kneedeep Ocean and Coober-Weezlers I found initially to be as obvious as a child naming their favorite doll "dolly." However, as the story progressed and having eventually "gotten the joke," what had irritated me earlier became whimsical and endearing.

Also, if you find yourself flinging your hands into the air about halfway through the novel and shouting, "Why are all of these terrible things happening to this poor guy?" Fear not, for you are not alone...maybe a little crazy for talking out loud to no one, but certainly not alone. Hang in there, unlike addictive yet inanely and inexplicably cryptic shows such as Lost, the payoff is worth the wait and after all is revealed and plot points explained it is a page-turning, barn-burning race to the end and I guarantee you'll finish the last eighty pages in one sitting.

For you non-nerds and first time science fiction readers, this novel is a fun read. Peirce's writing is totally accessible; he does a wonderful job of riding the fence when it comes to explaining the science of the fictional technology in a way that is not too technical so the cool kids can understand it and enjoyably creative so the nerds don't feel left out either.

In its original publication in 1989, the novel was titled `The Thirteenth Majestral' and thank goodness along the way someone thought to rename it `Dinosaur Park' which, despite its confusion with `Jurassic Park,' is a much more interesting and enticing title.

Hayford Pierce's "Dinosaur Park" is a fun, hilarious, intellectual, and action-filled book! Originally - and probably more appropriately - entitled "The Thirteenth Majestral," the book is an ornate, intricate, and humorous take on time travel. Pierce spends far more time on both action and philosophy than on info dumps, making for a great, fast-paced, read. Technology is assumed and depicted, but not subjected to laborious explication. Technology's effects on humans and the philosophical questions they raise, are never assumed. In the end, Pierce's combination of black humor and humane answers works very well in a rollicking context that brings to mind the best ray gun space opera.Dinosaur Park

The convoluted plot of Dinosaur Park is kicked of by a prank played by a ten-year-old Kerryl Ryson of the dinosaur planet Stohlson's Redemption.
Egged on by his seven-year-old bride to be, he causes a dinosaur to upchuck on a visiting offworlder, the Immaculate Ultim of Aberdown.
This is far from taken as a youthful indiscretion; a soldier is killed in the ensuing melee, leading to a trial in which results his father is executed by a Tyrannosaurus, and his clan's sacred fetish lost as they are given into slavery to the Ultim.

He's taken by the religious Jairaben dinosaur breeders to their enclave to serve as a probationer--essentially a slave, until his final judgement/conversion on reaching maturity.

Kerryl's nearing that stage when the arrival of the Contractionites, in their ship the Divine Providence, arrives--providentially. He's been honing his wiles over the years, gaining a measure of revenge against his fanatical tormentors, and after saving some of the Contractionites' child missionaries from death, sees his chance to escape with the space-traveling evangelists and begin his plan to somehow save his kinsmen and avenge his father's death.

Kerryl's training continues as part of the military arm of the (theoretically) well-intentioned group -- they're out to try to stop the very contraction of the universe, as they encounter planets and religions every bit as crackpot as their own.

As you may have guessed, 'Dinosaur Park' is a farce from beginning to end, taking aim at religion, bureaucracy, hypocrisy, pomposity, and arrogant (and deadly) elitism.
Apparently, it's intended as a direct parody of Jack Vance's space operas--and I suspect it will read a lot funnier to those intimately familiar with his work. For the rest of us, the language and intricate descriptions of inconsequentials, and elaborate build-ups of matters that turn out to have little or no bearing on the plot get a little heavy and tiresome at times.
The gallows humor is generally more risible than laugh-inducing, and often fairly predictable.

Fortunately, just about at the point where one's patience with the style and Kerryl Ryson's trials might well become exhausted, an actually interesting science fictional idea is presented.
This, along with a new character, makes the last third of the book a real pleasure to read. This new character? A "blurg" named Yveena Soolis, who arrives just in time to become Kerryl's love interest -- twice.

Originally released in 1989, the novel was also known as 'The Thirteenth Majestral', a title that makes a great deal more sense within the context of the story than the very misleading 'Dinosaur Park'.

DINOSAUR PARK, by Hayford Peirce
Wildside Press, 258 pages / trade paperback
U.S. [...] (trade pb), U.S. $6.99 (ebook / multiplatform availability)
Pub date: 3/31/2010
ISBN: 1-4344-1249-0