Article: Books for Young People - Battlesaurus: Rampage at Waterloo
Author: Kyla Sterling
Every so often, I am pleasantly surprised by a book.
Battlesaurus: Rampage at Waterloo (by Brian Falkner) had all the indicators of a beautiful train wreck. The cover image of a Napoleonic soldier riding a screaming T-Rex. The tagline: "A TYRANT unleashes a weapon of JURASSIC DESTRUCTION." The vaguely creepy red font used for the title. Heck, the title itself. It came across my desk at work as part of a crate of brand new books for high schoolers, and I didn’t even let it make it to the shelf. This was going to be too much fun.
And it was…just in a different way than I expected.
It starts off slowly. The dialogue is stilted, since the author is trying to give the characters speech patterns appropriate for the time period. There’s a weird “women cry to manipulate men” moment that comes out of nowhere. And the world makes no sense, but you just kind of have to go with it.
But the dinosaurs. Oh yes, the dinosaurs. There are little raptors all over Europe, apparently, but the big nasties live in America, which is entirely unsettled. (Because of the huge dinosaurs.) Except, for the plot of this book, somehow Napoleon has gotten his hands on a couple of them, and intends to use them to conquer the world. There’s a night-time encounter with one of these monsters, and it took me back to the first time I watched Jurassic Park as a kid, peeking out from behind the sofa.
Brian Falkner is very good at building tension. Midway through the book, there’s so much tension you feel like you want to burst – the Battle of Waterloo has come and gone (with dinosaurs!), our hero has a traitor in his circle of friends, the prisoners are in grave danger, and someone has to warn the English. He masterfully gets the characters into terrible scrapes and then somehow gets them out again without it feeling contrived. Even at the end of the book – only a handful of pages from the end – the group is in a real scrape and it’s going to take a miracle to escape… Well, let’s just say that I’ll be reading the sequel, once it comes out.
Battlesaurus has something for everybody. You’ve got dinosaurs at the Battle of Waterloo. You’ve got stage magic and illusions. You’ve got daring escapes while being hunted by terrifying creatures. You’ve got murder, you’ve got treachery, and you’ve even got a little bit of romance if you squint. Overall, it’s a fun read, so long as you don’t want to take anything too seriously.
Things to know: Being a book with dinosaurs, there are definitely dino-related deaths. They are, thus, messy. There are other deaths as well – some are close-up, and some happen offscreen (though one particular instance of offscreen death is more horrifying than all the on-screen ones). There is marital infidelity, though there are no details. It’s implied that one character is a prostitute, though her sister later says it wasn’t true. There’s also a few very suspenseful moments, so be prepared for a bit of “just one more chapter!” if this is a bedtime read.
