Love: The Dinosaur by Frédéric Brrémaud, Federico Bertolucci
My rating: 4/5 cats
this is the fourth installment of brrémaud’s “love”series, and i’ve been enjoying them very much and have been oh-so grateful for that “read now” option on netgalley each time a new one comes out. like all the previous volumes, this is a wordless story showing the realistic adventures/misadventures of a single species, with other creatures putting in appearances as predator, prey, or bystander in a story that is never disneyfied or hesitant to depict animals being animals, guts and all.
which is reminiscent of a dinner party with the skeksis:
but unlike all the previous volumes, i probably won’t be buying a hard copy of this for my future enjoyment.
that’s no slight to the book itself—the artwork continues to be outstanding (rendered somewhat less so by the process of me photographing it off of my computer with my dinky little camera)
i’m just not as keen on dinosaurs as i am on the fuzzy-wuzzy creatures that drove the previous volumes:
don’t get me wrong—dinosaurs are cool as shit, but even though i loved jurassic park(s) 1-35, i just don’t have that emotional connection to dinosaurs that i would if i’d ever seen one in person or dreamed of having one as a pet.
and this story is pretty standard dinosaur fare:
dinosaurs go about their business,
bigger dinosaurs come along,
even bigger dinosaurs come along,
and then it’s all
dinosaurs fight
dinosaurs fight
dinosaurs fight
dinosaurs fight
or dinosaurs flight
etc.
and that’s just a little meh to me, because i am meh towards dinosaurs in general (ever since i read Dinosaurs as a child and it broke my heart)
although there is a particularly good tailsmack here:
and i do like all wing’ed dinosaurs:
again—it’s truly lovely to look at
and knowing me the way i do (i.e.—quite well), i’ll probably end up buying this after all, since the completist in me is stronger than the me that shows restraint in spending money on things unnecessarily.
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