Groom of the Tyrannosaur Queen

A Time-Travel Romance

De: Daniel M Bensen

Narrado por: Eric Michael Stachura

Former soldier Andrea Herrera isn't happy with where her life's taken her. Specifically, Hell Creek, Montana, 65 million years before the present. As far as careers go, making sure the dinosaurs don't eat her paleontologist clients comes in a pretty dismal second choice to serving her country. But when their time machine malfunctions, Andrea and her team are trapped in a timeline that shouldn't exist with something a hell of a lot more dangerous than terrible lizards: other humans.

Kidnapped by the stone-age descendants of a lost time colony, Andrea finds herself stripped of her technological advantages and forced into a war against the implacable armies of the Slaver Empire. Even worse, the Slavers have captured the time machine and the mission's one surviving paleontologist, using his futuristic weapons for their own ends.

Andrea's only hope lies with the ferociously intelligent and violently insane tribal war-leader, Trals Scarback. Armed with his mystic sword, his trained velociraptor, and his herd of war-triceratops, this former slave has the resources and motivation to take on the empire. But can Andrea persuade him to see her as a partner rather than a tool for his ambitions? Only if she beats the barbarian at his own game and becomes the Tyrannosaur Queen.

©2016 Daniel M Bensen (P)2016 Daniel M Bensen

Yabba Dabba Do Me

Great performance on great material. Unique premise and mechanics. Timeline meets Jurassic Park meets Conan. More to follow!

A classic pulp adventure full of action, humor and romance

Bensen gave me a review copy of the Audible audiobook, so here it is:

Groom of the Tyrannosaur Queen revisits a classic Burroughsian scenario: dinosaur-fighting cavemen, and treats it with simultaneous gravity and humour. The narrative plays itself completely straight, and the cavemen take their own affairs seriously, while the time travelling interlopers are free to rail at the absurdity of things, but typically end up the butt of the joke. And of course, there's tons of dino action. And metamorphic battlesuit action. And dino-on-metamorphic battlesuit action. The combination of it all is great fun.

The dinosaurs are updated to fit more modern discoveries: feathers abound, misconceptions are corrected with turkey sized (but still deadly) velociraptors, and some reasonable speculation is made like ceratopsian quills. Alas, time moves forward, and it's looking ever more likely that Tyrannosaurus rex didn't have feathers (at least not a thick covering of them), but I can hardly hold that against the story. The point is it's an attempt at taking dinosaurs seriously as real animals that once lived in our world, rather than monsters there to kill.

That same effort extends to the anthropology of the cavemen: to them, dinosaurs are animals, that they hunt, tame, fear, worship, etc. just as we do. They have customs, beliefs, and act reasonably within their cultural rubric. Several riffs are made on the old "grug talk caveman" trope: our heroine assumes the non-intelligence of her captors, only to have the tables turned when she has trouble mastering their complex language. The book is full of such humour that lands on the time travellers: a moment when Chris realizes he forgot to pack a certain tshirt, and hence was unable to go full Dr. Stone, made me actually laugh-out-loud, not puff-air-from-the-nose "lol" as I so often do.

Layered on top of this is something of a bodice-ripper: Andrea finds herself the object of desire of Trals Scarback, a highly intelligent Conan-type who feels the constant compulsion to murder those around him. He can control it, mostly. Andrea can give as good as she gets, and it's not as dark as that makes it sound...and if that's really not your thing (like me), it's still mostly a pulpy scifi adventure story. I suppose that also applies if it is your thing. A Sharon Green book this is not.

The backstory is painted with a deft hand: the world of the future, where climate refugees migrate across America, is sketched out by Andrea's offhand recollections and comparisons. The situation of the past is explained with just enough detail to intrigue, but not fully collapse into cliche. The "illegal time colonists" all being white, and the Slavers' possession of English copies of the Bible suggest some kind of separatist church group. But why is the colonists' ancient city called "Mega"? Megalopolis? Mecca? If the Bible is written on the Plaques of Truth, what's on the Plaques of Lies? Harry Potter? What the hell was Ngarong babbling about when he turned on the radio? Something about a satellite? It doesn't really matter, but it does tickle.

The narrator has great range, nailing both the grizzled warrior and the nerdy scientist, and does pretty good with female voices either.I was never confused as to which character was speaking, and the tone of narration is also distinct.

Silly and Entertaining

The story is riddled with logic holes. But who cares, logic is not the point. And there is little romance, dispite the subtitle. Instead there is loads violence and blow by blow descriptions of battles, way too much. It bogs down the plot but it is typical of this genre. Still if you are in the mood for escapist nonsense, here it is. The narrator does a good job with his campy bombastic delivery.

Don't Judge This One By Its Cover

This book explores domination/subordination in a light-hearted way, there is some truly brilliant dialogue, and it also teaches you about dinosaurs. It's not your typical rah-rah-brah testosterone fueled sci-fi, despite the pulpy cover. There is enough action to oversaturate a Michael Bay film, and there are cavemen and sexy princesses and high tech powersuits and, yes, a tyrannosaurus rex on a rampage during a stormy battle scene. And time travel. But come on, those things are all necessary to the story. They really are!

You know an author's got amazing talent when they can tie all of those elements together into a coherent story that's satisfying and fun to read.

The narrator does a good job, but it took me a while to get used to his deadpan delivery. I like how he read the main characters' voices.

Entertaining story and a great reading voice

I was hooked by the title, and "Groom of the Tyrannosaur Queen" did not disappoint. It's not a super dense plot, but I liked that because I could keep coming back to it over the course of a few weeks whenever I did a long drive. The voices the reader chose to use were great, and since a lot of the storyline is based off of language barriers, he did a good job with choosing pronunciations and sticking to them.

Awesome!

Micheal Crichton meets Robert e Howard. absolutely fantastic hard sci-fi. Loved the characters and the story progression. The author is very clever.