The Dinosaur Knights

by Victor Milán
444 pgs  (Dinosaur Lords series #2)

There are a couple of things to be aware of, if you're considering reading Victor Milán's Dinosaur Lords trilogy. The first is that it's a fantasy series set in a world called Paradise, which resembles Europe in the 14th century. There are kings and lords and dukes, and seemingly never-ending feuds and wars between them. There are knights who fight those wars for their kings, which leads to the second thing to be aware of . . . the dinosaurs. There are dinosaurs on Paradise, and some of them have been domesticated and are used as beasts of burden and some are ridden by the knights fighting those wars. If that second thing makes your eyes roll back in your head and causes you to pass on the series without giving it a chance, you'll miss out on a pretty good story.

George R.R. Martin provided the blurb on the books' covers, in which he calls it ". . . a cross between Jurassic Park and Game of Thrones." That's not to say the series is as good as either of them, but it has its moments, and in this, the second book in the trilogy, those moments are more frequent than they were in book I.

Milán picks up right were he left off at the end of The Dinosaur Lords. Karyl Bogomirskiy and the dinosaur master Rob Korrigan are leading the efforts to defend the city of Providence, where Imperial Princess Molodia and her servant have just arrived seeking sanctuary from Duke Falk von Hornberg. And, in the west, the servants of the Creators, known as the Grey Angels, have begun to form their army by turning humans into mindless killers. All of this results in some impressive battle scenes, featuring armored triceratops, ferocious Allosaurus, and the real kings of the series--Tyrannosaurus Rex.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆