Book #4 of 2022: Cretaceous Sea | 4 DNF: Ravaged Land, Shade's Children, Surviving Antarctica, Shock

[thistlechaser]

Cretaceous Sea by Will Hubbell

I enjoyed this book way, way, way more than I should have. There were so many issues in it, from big to small.

The best part of the plot was the latter half of the book, excluding the ending (gah the ending was just so horribly bad).

Set in the near future, for unbelievable reasons a man acquires a time machine. He sets up a resort in the distant past, finds the richest person on the planet, and takes the rich guy and the rich guy's lover and his daughter to the past.

All of the story set in the past (the Cretaceous period) was great. The world seemed so real, the dinosaurs were cool, it would have been a perfect vacation.

Then there's more unbelievable plot about the time machine owner and the richest man in the world wanting to take over the world from the past. And "aliens" (people from the future, might as well have been aliens). Just so much unbelievable stuff.

Stuff happens, and three of the main characters (the daughter plus two staff members) are the last people left alive. And trapped in the past. And the meteor that killed the dinosaur is going to hit that very day.

The story got so good at that point. I don't know how seeing the meteor hit, the world next to destroyed, and the aftereffects could be so realistic when everything else was so bad.

All that makes the book sound pretty good, but there were so many bad elements. From the technical: The ebook was a scan of the paperback, so there were tons of errors and issues.
To the writing: Every Single Time a character opened their mouth, the dialogue was so unrealistic. The two female characters alternated between being sex objects and as stupid/weak/emotional as toddlers (it was actually insulting how badly the women were written). All the characters fell in love with each other at the drop of a hat.

The ending was the worst. From the point the "aliens" arrived on, it was just so bad. I don't even know why I kept reading, it was all so stupid and unbelievable.

It had so so so many bad issues, that I should have hated the story. But instead I enjoyed it so much I carved out time out of my day just to read more, and I often thought about the story when I wasn't reading it. I wish all the bad parts had been as good as the Cretaceous period stuff.

Did Not Finish

4) Ravaged Land by Kellee L. Greene - Very unbelievable post-apocalyptic story.
5) Shade's Children by Garth Nix - Got good reviews, but I couldn't get into it. Post-apocalyptic, robots were raising human children for some reason, one escaped.
6) Surviving Antarctica by Andrea White - Ugh. Such a bad Hunger Games knockoff.
7) Shockwave by Lindsay Buroker

Comments

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

Ha. Well, in spite of the things that sound good about it, I will probably give the Cretaceous Sea a pass. (Doubt I'd be likely to find a copy anyways). I just can't stand books with badly written dialog and characters (the women) deliberately dumbed-down.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's 20 years old or so, so it's hard to get a hold of now. (And not worth the search.) It felt much older than that though. The women characters felt like they were written in the 60s...