I received this book from Netgalley/the publisher in exchange of an honest review.

First up, I appreciate a publisher adding a note to the ecopy that the quality of the illustrations aren’t the best. I have had way too many books without a warning and so I was delighted to see a warning. OK, also dreading reading it, because would it only be the illustrations or also the text? And how much text is in the illustrations that may be unreadable?

Well, I have to be honest and say that at least the main text is fine and even very clear which made me happy. Sadly, if the text is part of the illustrations it is hard to read to the point that I just kinda gave up at points, which is a shame. Plus, throughout the book some letters were missing in the text.

Now to the book! Sadly, if you come for the dinosaurs, you are going to get disappointed. The book is 128 pages, and it isn’t until halfway that we get dinosaurs. Yup. Around page 60 we are finally at the Permian period with starter dinosaurs, and it isn’t until page 67 that we are at the REAL dinosaurs. Yup. I was definitely disappointed. Oh, and then around page 99 we were done because then the dinosaurs were extinct. Yup. We get a total of around 38 pages of dinosaurs, 31 if you want to go for real dinosaurs. sighs I was quite excited at the start because I liked that the book started with a lesson on geography, on volcanoes, and on fossils and how they are made/what they are, then to mass extinction (there were 5 of those), evolution. But then we went through ALL of the timelines. And I have to say, I came for the dinosaurs. I love all the other timelines, and apparently the book does have a subtitle about the other timelines, but I think it would have been a better choice if the books sub-titles (now almost only shown on the cover and not on websites) are the main topic. So not Dinosaurs: insert subtitle that is almost never mentioned and that cover is just to small to see that subtitle, but Exploring Prehistoric Life and Geological Time. Or just simpler Early Life and Dinosaurs. Or Dinosaurs and What Came Before. Now I was just getting bored because again, I came for dinosaurs. If I had known that half of the book was about non-dinosaurs? I wouldn’t have picked it up. If I had seen the subtitle I would have maybe considered it, though I am mostly a dinosaur girlie.

And while the book was fun, the writing style great and interesting, and the dinosaur parts fabulous, it just took too long. By the time we finally got to the dinosaurs my ADHD was full out of control and just didn’t want to read anymore, but I pushed through which well, led to me having less fun than if the book was entirely about dinosaurs (or if the title was a better indicator of other things).

The art was a lot of fun and super gorgeous (and also one of the reasons why I got this book), though it is just a shame it was of such terrible quality. I hope that in the published books it will be better. The note at the start promises that, but since I live in a Dutch country I can never truly check that.

So yeah, this could have been so much more, but I am not going to be able to rate it high because I am just too disappointed and my ADHD is grumpy because I had to continue reading.