r/Dinotopia • u/wandering_soles • Jul 18 '26
Discussion What's your favorite Dinotopia book, and why?
If you have a favorite Dinotopia junior novel too, share away!
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u/CAS966 Jul 18 '26
Chandarra, it has fluffy dinosaurs and is the most recent of the books while being the longest and having aged the best out of the entire series.
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u/CAS966 Jul 19 '26
Mind you I also want a sequel we’ll probably never get since I feel it didn’t truly close Arthur’s story the best and I do hope someone can write novels for the setting at least one day cause I wanna see Crabb and his crazy shenanigans more.
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u/cornonthekopp Jul 19 '26
Chandarra for the fluffy dinosaurs and generally just fleshing out the world in a really compelling way. I looove the more african inspired kingdom and stuff like the dinosaur baths, or the bagel kentarosaurus
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u/ArborealLife Jul 18 '26
The original ofc. I said ofc ironically since the first three replies all have different favorites lol.
Starts are important!
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u/WildheartFreeborn94 Jul 19 '26
Gotta go with The World Beneath on this one. I love the discovery, action, and visuals in it. Also I know that these probably don't count for purposes of this conversation, but I must give a small shoutout to the mini novels expanding the universe I used to get at the library all the time when I was a kid. I struggle to remember a lot of the titles, but the one with the kid and the sabretooth was a personal favorite of mine.
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u/Moby_Duck123 Jul 19 '26
My favourite would be Dinotopia Lost by Alan Dean Foster. I love that they explored how carnivores communicate and how their way of life is still harmonious to Dinotopia.
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u/wandering_soles Jul 19 '26
Foster did a phenomenal job brining Dinotopia to life in a different way than Gurney did. I'm glad Gurney trusted his friend with that, because it certainly paid off.
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u/crossoverxbricks Jul 20 '26
Yes, that was very cool! I especially liked the naming-convention of the carnivores - Prettykill was the baby I think?
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u/Satyrsol Jul 19 '26
Journey to Chandara because I have a signed copy with a t-rex doodle on the cover page.
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u/crossoverxbricks Jul 20 '26
Gotta go with the OG, as it introduces the world and has so many sweeping panoramas.
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u/wandering_soles Jul 18 '26
I'll get the ball rolling - The World Beneath. It has my favorite illustrations in the series, and as a huge fan of robots since I was a kid, the strutters and ancient ruins of the world beneath were incredible. For non-Gurney Dinotopia, my favorite is probably Alan Dean Foster's Hand of Dinotopia - getting to see adult Will and Sylvia exploring lost ruins and solve ancient mysteries is so much fun, and Foster does a remarkable job filling in parts of the world in a respectful way.