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A review by janiedean
The Dinosaur Knights by Victor Milán
4.0
This second entry in the series was an absolute delight and is probably my favorite out of the three published books yet, though it might be just because the ending was less of a cliffhanger feast than the other two... and [a:Victor Milán|4601681|Victor Milán|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1422563171p2/4601681.jpg] certainly managed to keep me hooked on his premise. Hell, now I'm definitely more of a dinosaur connoisseur than I was before reading book number one.
In all seriousness, this follow-up to The Dinosaur Lords absolutely benefited from having already established the characters and going straight to the plot and character build without suffering from the necessary politics and worldbuilding content that had slowed down the first slightly. Now that it's out of the way the plot absolutely benefits and I really loved the character development of all the mains - Melodìa had a fairly good arc and I appreciated that it wasn't without faults and difficulties, Rob and Karyl kept on being a delight both separately and with their odd couple dynamic and I really did love Jaume's arc even though I was hoping someone would send the poor man on vacation. And speaking of Jaume I was delighted with seeing more character development for his companions - Florian was definitely my favorite secondary character in the whole thing, but everyone else was fleshed better than in book one and I was down with all of the narrative choices. And speaking of secondary characters, Pilar also had some great material, and I really enjoyed how Falk went from fairly standard bad guy to 'extremely more complicated bad guy I can actually somehow sympathize with at times'.
More generally, I was extremely intrigued by the new worldbuilding information thrown in here (the theology is still really piquing my interest) and I absolutely loved how Milán has managed to actually have an extremely diverse cast representing most European ethnicities/countries/populations in this even if of course slightly reworked without sticking to the same three that everyone always finds in fantasy novels - in this book it was an angle lot more well-developed than the first one (who knew one main character and one minor character I won't spoil were part of a fairly misrepresented minority in most books let alone fantasy sagas?) and I loved seeing that the cast was representing nations from all over the continent. And the research was done really well on top of that! Adding that to the fact that the cast is also very diverse when it comes to sexual orientation - and I really enjoyed how this world is different from ours when it comes to acceptance of diverse sexualities -, I really appreciated how there's something for everyone in here. (Even the atheist characters! Okay, no one was going to stay atheist after angels literally came down crusading, but still it's really hard to find sympathetic atheist/agnostic characters in fiction and I liked that these books had more than one to start with.)
And of course the dinosaur content is still delivering strongly, along with the excellently written battle scenes - certainly Milán can write *those* very well. The fact that it had a strangely satisfying conclusion - all things considered - certainly added to my enjoyment. This was definitely the best of the triad, though the follow-up lived up with the comparison. I might have had a minor quibble with a few stylistic choices in sex scenes but honestly, it's really nothing in comparison to how much I enjoyed this book and where it brought the story and the characters. And the follow-up certainly didn't disappoint, either.
In all seriousness, this follow-up to The Dinosaur Lords absolutely benefited from having already established the characters and going straight to the plot and character build without suffering from the necessary politics and worldbuilding content that had slowed down the first slightly. Now that it's out of the way the plot absolutely benefits and I really loved the character development of all the mains - Melodìa had a fairly good arc and I appreciated that it wasn't without faults and difficulties, Rob and Karyl kept on being a delight both separately and with their odd couple dynamic and I really did love Jaume's arc even though I was hoping someone would send the poor man on vacation. And speaking of Jaume I was delighted with seeing more character development for his companions - Florian was definitely my favorite secondary character in the whole thing, but everyone else was fleshed better than in book one and I was down with all of the narrative choices. And speaking of secondary characters, Pilar also had some great material, and I really enjoyed how Falk went from fairly standard bad guy to 'extremely more complicated bad guy I can actually somehow sympathize with at times'.
More generally, I was extremely intrigued by the new worldbuilding information thrown in here (the theology is still really piquing my interest) and I absolutely loved how Milán has managed to actually have an extremely diverse cast representing most European ethnicities/countries/populations in this even if of course slightly reworked without sticking to the same three that everyone always finds in fantasy novels - in this book it was an angle lot more well-developed than the first one (who knew one main character and one minor character I won't spoil were part of a fairly misrepresented minority in most books let alone fantasy sagas?) and I loved seeing that the cast was representing nations from all over the continent. And the research was done really well on top of that! Adding that to the fact that the cast is also very diverse when it comes to sexual orientation - and I really enjoyed how this world is different from ours when it comes to acceptance of diverse sexualities -, I really appreciated how there's something for everyone in here. (Even the atheist characters! Okay, no one was going to stay atheist after angels literally came down crusading, but still it's really hard to find sympathetic atheist/agnostic characters in fiction and I liked that these books had more than one to start with.)
And of course the dinosaur content is still delivering strongly, along with the excellently written battle scenes - certainly Milán can write *those* very well. The fact that it had a strangely satisfying conclusion - all things considered - certainly added to my enjoyment. This was definitely the best of the triad, though the follow-up lived up with the comparison. I might have had a minor quibble with a few stylistic choices in sex scenes but honestly, it's really nothing in comparison to how much I enjoyed this book and where it brought the story and the characters. And the follow-up certainly didn't disappoint, either.