Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara Book

After a book that didn't live up to expectations, and a book that was an utter failure, Gurney has finally gotten back to the magic that defined the first Dinotopia.

First of all, let's talk about the art. I mentioned in my review of the last book, Dinotopia: First Flight, that I felt bad giving it one star because Gurney's art is always so good. While that's still true, the difference in quality between the art in that book, and the art in this one, is definitely noticeable to me now. The paintings in First Flight look so much rougher, and plainer, in comparison. While all of his art is great, you can definitely tell which paintings he went the extra mile for. They just have so much more detail, are more polished, and have fewer noticeable sketch lines. While there are a couple nice, big, full-spread paintings in First Flight, they all have at least some part of them that looks rough and lacks detail. There's no show stoppers like there were in the first book and here in Chandara. Beyond that, something is just wrong with the faces in First Flight. I mean, just look at the cover for a perfect example. It's not just human faces either. There are several paintings where the dinosaurs look oddly anthropomorphized in a way they never do in the other books. Their faces are human-like, the way they would be in some crappy Saturday morning cartoon show.

This book, in contrast, contains Gurney's best art in the entire series. Every page is a treasure. It even shows up the first book, which bears a lot of rough sketch marks itself. A side-effect of being first and of not knowing how successful it would become, I imagine.

The viewpoint is back to being first-person, using the same found journal framing device as the first book. I was so happy to see this finally return. I already mentioned why this works better for the series in my review for Dinotopia: The World Beneath, and beyond that I find Arthur to be the most interesting and likeable character, so it's nice to experience the world through his eyes again.

Narrative-wise, all of the advanced technology and Atlantis-esque nonsense from the previous two books is dropped entirely. It's only mentioned briefly in passing once. Instead, this book is about Arthur finally getting to visit Chandara, an isolationist desert culture on Dinotopia that rarely lets in visitors. This is what the previous two books should have been. There's no weird technology or long lost treasure. There's no cliche evil bad guy in a giant scorpion robot trying to kill all living dinosaurs because reasons. It's not trying to force conflict, adventure, and all the other standard ideas about what a story should be into a work where they don't belong, simply for the sake of a broader appeal. Instead, it sticks to the formula that worked so well for the first book. It's just our good friend Arthur Denison, the naturalist, doing what he does best--traveling through a new land, encountering new cultures, and documenting as he goes.

Because Gurney left out the ancient, advanced technology, and because Arthur is our narrator again, we finally get back to the amazing world-building of the first book. We've got street vendors who use the spikes on a dinosaur to hold fresh bread loaves that look like giant donuts. We've got skybax jousting. We've got a giant abacus strapped to the back of a dinosaur and an old man on top, creating an accounting partnership for the marketplace. We've got intricate drawings of the workings of a windmill. We've got songs written out in musical notation. We've got variations of the dinosaur alphabet. We've got Brachiosaurus fire-trucks, with details about how the pump works and what everything does. We've got two different schools of philosophy; one that wears spots and preaches a form of empiricism, one that wears lines and preaches a form of solipsism. We've got a village of people who shipwrecked, got their boats back with the help of the dinosaurs, cut them in half to form their homes, and believe that if Earth itself should ever "capsize" their ships will become whole again and sail them into the stars and keep them safe (unique religions! Yay!)

We've got a magic here that was sorely lacking in the previous two books. Gurney finally corrected a mistake that I have often made in my own writing--focusing on the big, high-concept ideas at the expense of the small details that actually matter. I don't care that there's an ancient cash of advanced technology and treasure. I don't care about some evil guy in a giant robot that wants to kill all dinosaurs. I care about people, culture, and relationships. I care about how these people shop, live, raise children, and coexist with creatures so different than themselves. I care about how Arthur is adapting to these new cultures and environments. How well is he fitting in? Do people like him there? Are they being kind to him? What surprises him? What doesn't? Without that stuff all the flash and bombast in the world is just going to fall completely flat, which is exactly what happened for two books in a row.

After reading the first Dinotopia, I was giddy with excitement at the prospect of three more books, before being plunged to the depths of disappointment. This book has lifted me back up again. I may not have gotten the four great Dinotopia books I was expecting, but at least I got two, and this one is even better than the first.