As much as I like dinosaurs this graphic novel just didn't work completely for me.

I did like the art, the story just never really got to me that much. I felt detached from it. There were some moments when the story moved me, like the one in the pic below and some sad "Survival of the fittest" moments when some poor dinosaur got killed.



Like this poor chap.



But all and all, not a favorite graphic novel of mine. Thankfully the art was good, but I kept on forgetting to read this story so it took my way longer than usual to finish it and that's just not a good sign for a good book. In the end, I just had to sit down and finish it so that I could move on to something else to read.

Thanks to Dark Horse Books and Edelweiss for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ( )

A couple of graphic novels: Age of Reptiles Omnibus and Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians, by Ricardo Degado. The first collects the initial 3 miniseries from Dark Horse - Age of Reptiles (collected as Age of Reptiles: Tribal Warfare), Age of Reptiles: The Hunt and Age of Reptiles: The Journey. They are a pure visual format; no dialogue, just action, and the story is expressed for the character reactions.

Yes, the characters are dinosaurs.

The first 3 miniseries are set in Cretaceous North America, the last in Cretaceous North Africa. Age of Reptiles follows a band of Deinonycuses; deprived of their kill, they exact a bloodthirsty revenge. Age of Reptiles: The Hunt follows a juvenile Allosaur after his mother is killed. Age of Reptiles: The Journey follows the migration south of herds of herbivores. Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians follows a Spinosaurus aegyptiacus in a swamp in what will become North Africa.

The books are very nicely drawn; the accuracy is pretty good as far as I can tell, including the skin coloration. They are very detailed and depict a full eco-system, not shying away from the nature red in tooth and claw aspect. However, there is a certain amount of anthropomorphism in the stories, especially in using emotional reactions in place of dialogue and ascribing anthropoid reactions to non-anthropoids. I was rather reminded of the Disney nature documentaries I recall from my childhood.

Recommended

Another solid book. The art continues to be gorgeous and the world is well-populated (almost to the point of disbelief, you can't take a step without tripping on a dinosaur here). There's some gore - a couple panels are pretty graphic - but nothing in the book is 'worse' than what you'd see in a nature documentary. I appreciated the eye for detail, capturing every moment of the dinosaurs' lives from eating to mating to sleeping to defecating. They feel real.

I do wish for a bit more - it feels like we only get small snippets of related groups of dinosaurs. ( )