HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Loading...

The Doctor and the Dinosaur: A Weird West Tale (2013)

by Mike Resnick

Series: A Weird West Tale (4)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
714371,565 (3.17)4
"Doc Holliday, post-Okay Corral, teams up with a succession of historical figures to battle the enemies of a steampunk America"--
None
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 4 mentions

Showing 4 of 4
Doc Holliday and crew end up being dragged into the bone wars when Cope and Marsh are digging up commanche burial mounds to find dinosaur bones. Geronimo gives Doc another year of life to prevent the medicine men from bringing back the Dino's. A fun read but really trashes the character of those early paleotologists. ( )
  dswaddell | Apr 13, 2015 |
Another crazy tale in the Weird West series. All the regulars are here - Doc Holliday, Geronimo, Teddy Roosevelt (who prefers to be called Theodore), Ned Buntline and Thomas Edison. Wyatt Earp is absent, however.

Doc is about to die and Geronimo appears at his bedside to offer him a deal. One year of 'recovered' health if Doc will take on a task for him. Sounds like a good deal to Doc, not realizing that 'recovered health' means how he was when he first met Geronimo and that he would have to deal with dinosaurs called forth by some Comanche medicine men and two rival paleontologists. Buntline and Edison are there to invent a weapon that might bring down a whooping big dinosaur. There wasn't as much Buntline/Edison dialogue as there had been in previous books and I missed that.

I give it only 3.5 stars instead of my usual 4 for two reasons - There were illustrations that I felt did not live up to the story or the cover art, very disappointing and Doc didn't say 'huckleberry' even once. But I still loved it and hope that Geronimo still needs Doc. ( )
  mysterymax | Jan 25, 2014 |
The Doctor and the Dinosaurs is my first venture into Mike Resnick's Weird West Tales, and actually my first exposure to the author, period. Like many kids growing up, I went through a phase in my childhood where I was just nuts for dinosaurs. I suppose a part of that love has stayed with me all this time, because when I saw the cover and description for this one I just couldn't resist.

This is the fourth book of the series starring Doc Holliday of American Old West fame, but if I'm not mistaken, each installment can be read on its own. We seem to be catching our protagonist at a pretty bad time though, as the book opens on Doc bedridden and coughing out his lungs in a sanitarium, dying of the dastardly consumption. But then he is visited by the medicine man and great chief Geronimo, who grants him one more year of life in exchange for a favor.

Doc Holliday is tasked to stop two paleontologists who have been carrying out their digs on sacred Comanche burial grounds in Wyoming. Sounds easy enough. But that was before Doc learned that the two scientists involved are none other than Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, two men who hate each others' guts and are locked in eternal competition. Time is running out and the Comanche medicine men have made things clear: stop desecrating their lands or they will unleash a horde of monsters, the kind our world has not seen in 65 million years.

A crazy blend of steampunk, fantasy, alternate history and western, this book was as much fun as I thought it would be! I've never had the pleasure of reading a "true" dime novel from the latter half of the 1800s, but I wouldn't be surprised if Mike Resnick is in some way emulating the spirit and style of the popular fiction in those days. As you would expect from the above synopsis, the book's story and characters are more sensational than deep, with an entertaining plot that contains more clever, snappy dialogue than exposition. Nevertheless, that's the kind of book it was intended to be. In that sense, it does the job and does it well.

This book was also such a treat for the part of me that still loves dinosaurs. We all know there's no shortage of stories about the Old West featuring famous gunfighters like Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, Cole Younger, and the list goes on. But while this series also features an impressive list of shootists, I loved how this particular story directed its focus to another significant event that took place during America's Gilded Age -- the Great Dinosaur Rush. For one, the hatred between Cope and Marsh was so intense, their rivalry so frenzied, that the two men actually spawned a period in paleontological history known as the Bone Wars. It's fascinating stuff! I was happy to see a spotlight on this idea, and an entire story built around it.

Is The Doctor and the Dinosaurs a little over the top? Perhaps. But is it fun? Definitely. I picked up this book hoping for an afternoon of fun, light reading, and that's exactly what it delivered. ( )
  stefferoo | Dec 10, 2013 |
Showing 4 of 4
no reviews | add a review

Belongs to Series

You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
Quotations
Last words
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

"Doc Holliday, post-Okay Corral, teams up with a succession of historical figures to battle the enemies of a steampunk America"--

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.17)
0.5 1
1
1.5
2 2
2.5
3 2
3.5 3
4 3
4.5
5 1

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,243,435 books! | Top bar: Always visible