“It’s like a cross between Jurassic Park and Game of Thrones.” says George R. R. Martin. Got your interest? I should hope so!
Get ready for Knights in full armour astride not horses but rampaging T-Rexes with the release of Victor Milan’s The Dinosaur Lords. Although the Fantasy-Faction review team is still tearing their way through it, early reports tell us to expect ‘lush world building, exciting magical elements, and riveting political intrigue’.
Making this book particularly special is not only the awesome cover art by artist Richard Anderson, but the exquisite interior illustrations sprinkled throughout the book. These black and white sketches feature some of the dinosaurs (and knights on dinosaurs) that readers will find inside The Dinosaur Lords novel.
Our good friends at Tor have been kind enough to give us a sneak preview of one of those images and some notes from the author about it. Check it out:
Interior Illustration #5: Pirate-Eatin’ Pliosaurus!
Meet Pliosaurus funkei, the monster formerly known as Predator X. Nuevaropans call it Bocaterrible, Terrible Mouth. Wouldn’t you?
Not a dinosaur but a marine reptile – which could grow over 40 feet long. Big, scary ones like this are called “sea dragons,” as the immense flying non-dinosaurs known to us as Azhdarchids are often dubbed “dragons.” The élite Nuevaropan Imperial Navy is called the Sea Dragons, for good reason.
Minor Spoiler Alert: this bad girl appears in a tale told by the Imperial Champion, Count Jaume, to his lover (and one of our protagonists), Imperial Princess Melodía. And yes, it’s eating pirates.
Yes, you get not only knights riding dinosaurs, but pirates. And the sea monsters who love to eat them.
Intrigue, beauty, brutality, and dinosaurs – welcome to Paradise.
A world made by the Eight Creators on which to play out their games of passion and power, Paradise is a sprawling, diverse, often cruel place. Men and women live on Paradise but dinosaurs predominate: wildlife, monsters, beasts of burden – and of war. Colossal plant-eaters like Brachiosaurus; terrifying meat-eaters like Allosaurus and the most feared of all, Tyrannosaurus rex rule the land. Armored knights ride dinosaurs to battle legions of war-trained Triceratops and their upstart peasant crews. Seeking to centralize real power in his figurehead Fangèd Throne, Emperor Felipe of Nuevaropa sets off a chain of wars that may blaze up to consume the continent called the Tyrant’s Head. But is Imperial ambition the only spark, or are more sinister forces at work?
And so we have as our players in the tale: Fallen hero Karyl Bogomirsky, who wants to escape from constant headaches and nightmares and gets lured into the quixotic task of raising an army from a province of pacifists. Part-time Dinosaur Master and minstrel, and full-time rogue Rob Korrigan, who wants to get paid and laid—but he follows the man he’s written and sung about into what looks like certain disaster. Princess Melodia, who is eager to escape the shadow of her indulgent but neglectful father the Emperor but is faced by consequences she never anticipated. And Imperial Champion Jaume, Count of the Flowers, the Empire’s most celebrated swordsman and poet, who wants to serve Beauty and the right. But what can he do when faced with two equally wrong and ugly choices?
Lush, exotic and utterly chaotic, Victor Milan’s splendidly weird world of The Dinosaur Lords is a fantastical creation, a mirror image of 14th century Europe with its dynastic rivalries, religious wars, and byzantine politics…and the weapons of choice are dinosaurs.
Thank you to Richard Anderson for the wonderful art work and Victor Milan for the wording above and the upcoming novel! We’d highly recommend readers interested in the series check out this excerpt, Victor’s website and twitter and the book’s official site website.
If you’re ready to hand over your cash already then the book is released on July 28th and can be pre-ordered at IndieBound, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, amongst other fine retailers in the US. In the UK Tor Books are also publishing it and you can find it in local bookstores or on Amazon UK.
Julia Kitvaria Sarene
Kellie Doherty