Thursday 4 March 2010

YOUNG ADULT REVIEW: Z-Rex - Steve Cole

BOOK BLURB:

Adam Adlar wakes one morning - his scientist father has been missing for two weeks and Adam prepares himself to spend another day alone. But this will be the most terrifying day of Adam's life. Some strange men are snooping around and before he knows what's happening his flat is savagely attacked by an enormous monster. Adam knows he has to find his father ...Z Rex is a living, breathing, man-eating dinosaur who has been brought to life by Adam's dad. He can talk, think - and kill. And, he has no idea why he's here. Zed wants answers, and Adam's dad has them ...In an daring trip across the world, boy and dinosaur set out to find Mr Adlar. But there are people desperate to stop them and they seem to be going to extreme lengths to do so.


REVIEW:

Whilst I’m usually enamoured with a tale featuring dinosaurs and prepared to take a tale at face value for pure entertainment on the YA market, this one took my trust, smashed it up and really took the tale too far. The characters were more a 2d model than fully rounded, the concept of an evolutionary dinosaur pushed too far ahead of time and to be honest made the whole tale simply to ridiculous to have any real pleasure from. Add to the mix certain chase sequences that were silly and an author who really didn’t want to let down the pace to give readers a breather and it was sadly a tale that I was quite pleased to finish. I will keep an eye out for Steve as some of the idea’s were quite cunning but if a lot of these problems aren’t rectified then I fear a short career as an author.

1 comment:

Selestial said...

I'm really bummed to hear that. A long time ago, I saw a trailer for this book and thought my son would love it. It's really too bad :(