I absolutely loved this story. It was so great I finished it in a single day.

I've been craving stories where the main character gets transported, either by time travel, portal, or aliens, to a less advance society. And uses their knowledge of the modern age to put themselves in a better position, and improve their new world.

And this one hit all the marks. Here you have an alternative earth, where ages ago someone transported a bunch of humans and other species from earth to an alien planet (not that they know) and basically has an earthlike world that is different. They have muskets, and surgery, but not much else that is modern.

The main character being a chemist means he has a lot of knowledge about a lot of things, and he struggles with finding how to implement in this world where he has to go back to the basics and find everything in nature first.

The first book is very much slice of life, and I loved that. I loved the slow story of being on a foreign planet with foreign humans. Not knowing the language or the customs. And slowly learning.

There were things I disliked, the main characters first reaction to seeing battle was an desire to flee. It took him several pages to even mention "can't leave my friends". Which made me severely dislike him, but I suppose it's.. maybe a more realistic reaction in the face of death? Bravery is, after all, being scared shitless and still standing there.

The book takes time to underline how different this planet is to earth, it takes time to explain how the moons are different, and periods are different, and the day-and-month cycle was different. But then some things was the same. Like the use of minutes and miles. Other reviewers complain about this, however I really didn't notice until looking at other reviews.

I absolutely loved this book. Tho, I personally don't know much about dinosaurs (before reading this book). I'm not sure anyone who had an active interest in Dinosaurs would learn much from this.

In the history part of the book, I wish there were more images. There were a lot of names thrown around, and most I had never heard of. Of course, in todays day and age we're all carrying a Google Machine in our pockets, but it would have been better if I didn't have to google a weird ass dinosaur name every 5min.

Also, I wish I learned more about raptors.

I was really looking forward to reading this book and was overjoyed at the chance to ARC read it.

I found the book to be an easy and exciting read. The pages just kind of flew past as I greedily wanted to learn more about the Kajiu. That being said, I think my 4 stars might be a little generous, if you like godzilla-like creatures, you'll like the book. If you don't, it might fall a little flat.

What I really enjoyed, is how much they explained certain things. They went over the origins of the Godzilla movies, they went over how different Kaiju biology was to what we know from earth. They went over how the Kaiju worked, how their biome worked, and stuff like that. I wish there was more talk about the actual science of things, Jamie is one of the few characters that is mentioned frequently in the book that isn't a scientist, so it makes sense they'd explain it to him (and thus us) in layman terms. But I personally enjoy books where the science is explained. But here it was all very pop fiction like.

One thing I really didn't like is how vague all description of the Kaiju were. At first, I thought they were just building up the suspense. But we never get proper descriptions other than "mountain-like" and "something out of lovecraft". So this entire time I'm just imagining a giant turtle with a mountain on their back. And.. honestly that was a big downer. I mean, we're going to a completely separate world? With an entirely different ecosystem? With all kinds of creatures? And you're not going to give me detailed explanations on how these things look?? They were vague about EVERY description, not just the monsters, the base camp was compared to an.. ewok village I think it was? It was in the trees, and that was all the information we got. Now, Star Wars is huge, and almost everyone has watched the movies. I happen to not have. So again, I sat there with no description of anything other than "in the trees" and "covered in nets"

My biggest complaint however, is the real-world ties this book had. It starts off with the Pandemic with the main character struggling to pay rent and finding a good job. Which, I personally felt like is too-soon to have in a book, but not that big a deal. No, what I disliked, is that the political climate in the US at the time gets mentioned in the book several times. No names are mentioned, but certain things are said and even mocked that it is [i]very[/i] clear what is being said. I was uncomfortable with it honestly. Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm not even American. I don't care much about who is or isn't president. But when I pick up a sci-fi book about big ass monsters, I don't really expect that to be part of the story. But, maybe this is me being overly sensitive to the subject. Maybe I've been lucky in the books I've read where the President, and the political climate, in the US is always kind of imaginary with fake names and stuff tossed around. Maybe it's perfectly normally to toss that level of in-real-life drama into a book that has nothing to do about that stuff. Or maybe it's a "bit", something to upset a certain type of people just enough that the book gets talked about. I don't know. I just know I didn't like it and you could hear my eyerolls from across the street.

That being said. If there is ever a sequel released, I will 100% read it. This book wasn't enough. It wasn't nearly enough about the Kaiju and their world, and I need more.