Any of you dino fans also read this series?
You bet!
I just love the first two of Jame's Gurney's books, "A land apart from time", and "The World Beneath". The pictures are just gorgeous with so much love for the detail, that the idea of Dinotopia becomes quite credible. Especially so in the 19th century setting of the book.
I wasn't quite as fond of Gurney's third book "First Flight", in which I think he broke with some of the earlier concepts of Dinotopia. The pictures too, while still gorgeous in style, didn't appear as "realistic" as the pictures in the first two books did (e.g. for the fact that the books main character is kneeling on the back of a flying Skybax with his arms spread far. Looking at the earlier books and the saddles they are using there to lie flat on the backs of their Skybaxs one would expect that character to be sweeped of his mount instantly).
There is good hope for the next Dinotopia book by Gurney to be an excelent one again. Not only will it be about Bix and Arthur, and Will Denison again, but it will also be focused on "Chandara", a town of which we heard in the earlier books, but of which we didn't get a glimpse so far.
I'm also very fond of Dean Alan Foster's two Dinotopia books, "Dinotopia Lost" and "The Hand of Dinotopia".
I read the 16 other Dinotopia novels, written by other authors, too. I liked most of them though I wasn't quite as taken with any of them as I was with the books of Gurney and Foster.
Do you know the audio plays of "A land apart from time" and "The World Beneath"? They are absolutely gorgeous! They did an excelent job there not only through good dialogues (strongly based on the books, but of course they had to write a lot own dialogue as there is not so much literal dialogue in Gurney's books), but also through very good use of music and "dinosaur sounds".
As for the series, there was the mini series which started and a subsequent series of I think 14 more sequels. The mini series which started it all was absolutely horrible! I really can't find any kinder terms for it. The modern day setting already is quite problematic, but in they also messed almost everything about Dinotopia. For example it was nothing short of a dictatorship with the mayor of Waterfall City being the dictator to order everyone around. Nobody on Dinotopia in that movie seemed to have ever heard of the Dinotopian code "Weapons are enemies even to their owners".
The 14 sequels of the series weren't quite as bad. They are absolutely NO comparison to any of the books. However they had some better actors in the series and (more important) they kept Dinotopia a little closer to the Dinotopia of the books. The mayor of Waterfall City was for example no longer a totalitarian ruler and weapons and violence were not as accepted as they were in the mini series. A lot of the 14 sequels was about the problems people of a modern day society would have if they stranded in Dinotopia, which is an interesting story by itself. If one stops to compare this series with the books all the time it can be really enjoyable. The books and that series are two totally different things, as soon as one accepts that fact the series (not the mini series) can be quite nice.
A major drawback of the series however, is that the dinosaurs play a very, very marginal role. There are only three dinosaur characters with a name and they hardly ever do anything important. Also the importance of sunstones (which are barely known in the Dinotopia of Gurney's books) is overstressed in the series as the only thing that keeps Dinotopians save from carnivores.
