This is a genuinely interesting novel. The set up is delightful science fiction: a rich entrepreneur figures out you can dive into Jupiter’s Eye to travel back in time. It’s something to do with cosmic strings. Awesomely they aren’t going back into the past to see dinosaurs, they want to determine if the so-called universal constants of gravity and the speed of light are genuinely constant, or if their having changed over time accounts for problems in the maths of physics and why they can’t get their faster than light ships to work .
The dinosaurs they encounter are a mere distraction for a handful of researchers to deal with. An awesome distraction. These are cool, feathered dinosaurs (proto-feathers), with intelligence and personality – not just mighty killing machines. There are very enjoyable action sequences with dinosaur battles; they shoot a lot of them in the head (it’s okay, time is like a river) and receive relatively few serious injuries which is a little surprising.
It’s a very science heavy book; the author has a broad spread of interests through physics and paeleontology which gives some vivid insights into cosmic science and fringe theory. I loved that. Each chapter ends with a brief discussion of the theories used and a list of links for further reading and reference. But the science dominates the dialogue for pages at a time instead of allowing for character development – there’s the tough one, the science lady, the weird kid who runs off to live with the dinosaurs (I like him) and some even tougher military men.
The science is fascinating, and it’s worth getting through the dialogue to the next brilliant description of dinosaur behaviour. If you like dinosaurs, you’ll enjoy this as much as I did. I downloaded the sequel today.