Yeah I know, the author’s name sounds more like the beginning of an interesting sentence, but from what’s being circulated in the blogsphere about her, she may be the next up-and-comer in the world of supernatural romantic fiction. Simply because, while we’re looking for werewolves, vampires, and other shapeshifters to satisfy our hunger, she’s out there doing the never-before-thought-of. She’s taking the leap from werewolves, and shapeshifters, and decided to turn hers into …dinosaurs. This is a first-ever for me, folks. I’ve read a lot of novels involving werewolves and shapeshifters, and I don’t think I’ve ever run into any that could turn into dinosaurs.
What’s crazy is, she doesn’t leave out the other forces of night in her books; the vampires are also in there, so presumably, there may or may not be an eventual discovery of werewolves. But dinosaurs? Seriously? The Galveston County Daily News discovered this one, because Nina Bangs is a local author; gotta love those kooky Texans:
“The series — obviously urban fantasy, since shapeshifting dinosaurs don’t tromp the streets of Houston or anywhere else (or do they?) — posits that when this era comes to an end with the Mayan calendar in 2012, a group of bad guys will destroy everything like they have several times before.
But this time, they won’t start over. If the bad guys win, it’s all over. So a group of good guys have been gathered to stop the bad guys.
The good guys were dinosaurs in the last era, the one that ended with the extinction of the dinosaurs. They might have been something else before that, but their leader is manipulating their memories, so nobody’s really sure. There are flying dinosaurs, sea-saurs, raptors, a T-rex — any scary dinosaur you can imagine, Nina’s got it.
Each book focuses tightly on one episode in the overall tale.
The first book (“Eternal Pleasure,” Leisure Books, 308 pages) takes place in Houston, with the Tyrannosaurus Rex shifter named Ty as the main character.
The next (“Eternal Craving,” Leisure Books, 352 pages) is in Philadelphia, with an allosaurus named Al — the leader named them, and the joke is acknowledged.
This story [Eternal Prey] has moved the crew to Portland and has one of the Utah raptor pack as the hero — and a dead vampire queen’s daughter as the heroine. She’s not a vampire yet, which is good, because Utah hates vampires for killing his brother and pack mate, Rap.
A large part of the conflict is when the heroine will be turned to a vampire and what the hero’s reaction will be.”
Despite the dedicated fan of supernatural and folklore fantasy that keeps screaming in my brain ‘that’s totally insane’, I think I would read these. They sound interesting, if not slightly bizarre. I love the blend of Mayan mythology and vampire folklore that she mixes into a pretty original plot. And who are we to shrink away from the strange and new, right? I think I’ll give these a shot. Meanwhile, what do the rest of you think about shapeshifting dinosaurs, of all things? Hit or miss?
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I’ll give it a shot, but the first thing that comes to mind is to ask if she played Werewolf the Apocalypse, and played a Mokole in that setting. Their “battle forms” took the shape of dinosaurs.
I also thought of Alan F. Troop’s Dragondelasangre series with shape-shifting dragons in a modern setting.
Shape-shifting dinosaurs? I’m sold! I’ve had a kinda-sorta dino-obsession since seventh grade, but it’s dimmed down lately. I was going to buy this a while back, but I didn’t know what it was about. These books do seem a little strange that there’s vampires/werewolves in it, too. They don’t seem to mix well with a dinosaur plot, but I’m still going to give these a try.
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