Customer Reviews

Dinosaur Wars

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you like disaster and alien-attack novels, dinosaur resurrection novels, survival novels, crazy-wild sc-fi\fantasy that reads fast and fun, with a cliff-hanger feel from chapter to chapter, Thomas P. Hopp's DinoWars story is a great night's escapist feast. It is a first novel, so there are issues of polish that I anticipate will disappear in subsequent offerings by the author.

The unexpected plot builds well around believable characters. And there are great lines throughout that makes you feel like you are somewhere between a Flash Gordon or Edgar Rice Burroughs episode and an "Aliens" movie. For example (from page 56):

Chase was dumbstruck. Seeing his confusion, the man spat some tobacco juice. "You been up in the hills or something? That's some sort of alien death ray up there." The man cast a worried glance at the moon. "The whole world's under attack. That's what's wrong with the radio. Moon ray took out the radio station. Good country music. I'm gonna miss it."

With T-Rex's "blood-curdling roar" in the front yard, a real "death ray from space," and a friendly family of hay-eating parasaurolophuses waiting for their next meal to be dropped to them from the hayloft, Thomas Hopp pulls off a great addition to the growing sci-fi/fantasy dinosaur subgenre. The second book in the series is available, "Dinosaur Wars: Counterattack," and a third is in the works. I look forward to reading more. Visit his website at: http://thomas-hopp.com/

This is one of the best adventure stories I have read in a long time. The dinosaurs are realistic and very scary. The heroes are a male/female pair who could be played by Brad Pitt and Jennifer Love Hewett -- easy! They are real heroes too, not the dark and evil types so often portrayed these days. He's a wildlife biologist (a noble profession) and she's studying paleontology at Montana State -- what a perfect couple to get involved with dinosaurs, and each other! The romance is light and suitable for all ages.

This book is well written. You never know which way the plot will turn. My favorite scene: Kit Daniels fends off a T-rex with a pitchfork while Chase Armstrong loads his rifle.

In my opinion, this is one of the better dinosaur adventures published in recent years, and that includes the Jurassic Park novels. With strong male and female lead characters, it outdoes many other adventures of this type.

I am a fan of dinosaurs in literature, so I enjoyed the up-to-date science. Dinosaurs with feathers, raptors bigger than velociraptors, charming tiny pterodactyls, it's got it all.

Like the promo for this book says, it's like Jurassic Park meets Star Wars. Very hard to put this one down till I had finished it. There is non-stop action and suspense, and the characters were delightful. Great heroes and villains, people and creatures you want to follow to the end to find out what happens to them. I really think this is much better reading than Jurassic Park because the characters are so very interesting. A young man, a young woman, a love interest while the world seems to be coming to an end, with space invaders, dinosaurs roaming the earth again, and danger everywhere. It really is like a Star Wars story, with lasers blasting. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way.

The book Amazon sent me had a different cover from the one shown on the Amazon page (with a dinosaurian warrior with a gun). However, it was probably a better cover, because it told alot about the story. It had a T-rex, and tanks and helicopters, and a young woman on horseback, and her dog, all the stuff that was in the story.This was a great book. The action starts when Jet Propulsion Labs space scientists find a lost moon base. Send up some astronauts to investigate, and before you know it, an invasion from the past. American tanks and helicopters fight back but the issue is in doubt right up to the "thrilling finish" as they say.This is a really solid military science fiction story, with a romantic sub-plot between the girl on horseback and the Yellowstone Park ranger, who, by the way, is also pictured on the new cover. I also like the dinosaurs the author chose to put in the book. Pachyrhinosaur sounds like a nasty beast from hell. Excuse my French.A stand-out was Diedre Potter (any relation to Harry?) the JPL rocket lady. She and her space probe Clementine started all the trouble, but they also try to be part of the cure. Read it and see what I mean. Another favorite was the tank commander Vic Suarez. How can one man lose so many battles and still come out a winner? I was touched by his warrior heart and fidelity to duty, but his human side too, when he saw good men die.The only thing I would have liked to see was more about the mysterious civilzation of the Kra, who are the dino invaders. Where did they originally come from? Why did they go extinct and then somehow return to fight for their home world? Some of that is explained, but more would be better. Maybe in a sequel?My vote is thumbs up for Dinosaur Wars and for the survival of the human race.

Dinosaurs come alive in this novel in amazing detail. I was astonished by the ease with which Hopp, a new author on the science fiction scene, brought the big animals to life. The scenes of tyrannosaurus attacks on a ranch in Montana were among the most vivid and truly frightening I have ever read in a novel of this type.

In addition to huge monsters of the Cretaceous Era, Dinosaur Wars includes a hypothetical intelligent species of dinosaur, and it impressed me as one of the best of such imaginary creations I have encountered. The Kra, as they call themselves, are about the size of humans, but have the features of carnivorous dinosaurs somewhat like the velociraptors of Jurassic Park fame. However, these animals were covered in feathers, not scales. Most impressively, in terms of imagination, the Kra are returning from outer space after a delay of 65 million years to find their lost civilization, destroyed when the fateful asteroid crashed down upon them at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. Beneath a geological stratum of rock lies an entire buried city, right under the ranch!

It is a given that the US Military will not let the former owners reclaim their place on earth without a fight, so war is inevitable. Tanks fight laser-armed enemy walking machines in battles that recall the best of HG Wells' War of the Worlds. Hence the appropriate title, Dinosaur Wars. This book is loaded with action and danger, a page turner from start to finish.

None of the above should take away from the fact that this book has a very interesting take on dinosaurs, with wonderful detail about the creatures. Only the Kra are intelligent so a comparison to Dinotopia, with its many intelligent dinosaurs, is not warranted. Instead, Hopp glimpses the fascinating lives of realistic dinosaurs. Some are charming, like tiny, chirping pterodactyls, which fly into one scene. Some are awe inspiring, like the giant, flapping flyer, quetzalcoatlus, the largest pterodactyl. The human heroes of the story get up-close with a huge pair of duckbilled dinosaurs, parasaurolophus. They have a disastrous run-in with a horned dinosaur, pachyrhinosaurus, which destroys their pickup truck and nearly kills them with its long, rhinoceros-like nose horn.

Human characters come in an unusually rich variety as well. I can't imagine where some reviewers got the notion that the characters are a weakness of this book. This is emphatically not true! There are ranchers, soldiers, scientists, a university student and a wildlife biologist, all of whom have been created with wonderfully full and interesting detail. My favorite among them was old Professor Ogilvey, the paleontologist, who reads as a wise old mentor who guides the young heroes on their quest for survival in a world run amok with thundering beasts and dangerous invaders of the dinosaur kind.

Horray for Hopp! ..., being from a small publishing house, but it was worth the price. It will not disappoint, if you like action stories, good fiction based on modern science, and a little romance thrown in for good measure. With the outcome of the struggle in doubt from beginning to end, this book is a spellbinding tour-de-force of storytelling.

The plan was a simple one. Civilization would escape the coming impact of a monster asteroid by placing their DNA (and that of the animals they needed) on a base built on the moon. The computers would wait a few years after the event and then re-establish civilization by bringing everything back to life.
But something went wrong and 65 million years later the Kra find that Earth is covered in mammals. And to a dinsoaur the only good mammal is a mammal soaking in gravy. Yummy.
As you can guess this is a cool, action packed, adventure with alien invaders who happen to be the old masters of Earth - and with their weapons might become the new masters. Fast plot, cool characters, would make for a interesting TV series. Second book is already out!

The dinosaurs are back, they are intelligent, they have superweapons and destroy earth's armies shooting death rays from the moon. Fortunately one of the dinosaurs becomes our friend and betrays his own people. He puts a few superbombs in a dinosaur's meeting (devoted to eat alive human POW) and mankind is safe.
Well, I read much better comic strip stories. If you want to read an alien invasion story as it should be, then read Niven and Pournelle's 'Footfall' !

This was a great read. Lots of terrific action coupled with a very creative and intelligent plot makes this a must read. I highly recommend it to all, especially sci fi lovers!

This is one great story. Hopp has created a world where dinosaurs and humans come into contact, and conflict, and has done so in a way that contrasts with others who have written on this subject before him. Like Crichton's Jurassic Park, the time and place are here and now, this planet, our times. Hopp's means of getting dinosaurs to suddenly appear everywhere is truly ingenious. The dinosaurs are easily as frightening as those in Jurassic Park, and more up-to-date with modern science.

On the other hand, the people of Dinosaur Wars were much easier to like than Crichton's grouchy Ian Malcolm. The young, dashing hero, Chase Armstrong and the heroine, Kit Daniels fall in love while trying to survive in a world suddenly full of dinosaurs. There are hard-pressed tank troops defending the earth, as well as closeup looks at the human sized dinosaurian invaders who call themselves Kra. With a lot of lasers blasting and spaceships landing, as well as dinosaurs of every variety, there is an almost overwhelming richness to the story.

This book reads somewhat like an Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure, but with a much more modern take on matters military and the personalities involved in the story. And, while I don't mean to knock Dinotopia, this book is Dino-Dystopia, with conflict on every page that makes it just a bit more interesting, in my opinion. Hopp seems to have done his research well on matters of the military, on dinosaurs, on space flight, and on a mysterious energy source he calls kekuah.

This book was thrilling all the way. I recommend it enthusiastically!

My husband and I loved this book! We were hooked from page 1 and had to keep reading till the end. There are 4 groups of people, and their individual storylines all weave together cleverly. In a lot of books, I dislike one storyline and have to slog through it -- but not here. I loved them all. The women are as cool, smart, and strong as the men. There are heart-stopping dino attacks as well as big laughs. It seemed so plausible! We're hoping for a sequel. Note to Parents: fine for kids, no sex or swearing.