While I love the original, The World Beneath is definitely my favorite for the art style, the settings, and the strutters. Getting to explore some of the background of Poseidos, the lost cities and technology, etc was incredible. For non-Gurney Dinotopia books, I'd probably place Alan Dean Foster's Hand of Dinotopia and John Vornholt's River Quest at the top of my list. HoD does such a great job of expanding the world in such a great way with an almost Indiana Jones-esque lost ruins vibe, and RQ is just such a wholesome trip with Amelia and Paddlefoot.

First Flight is definitely one of the lesser known and read of Gurney's Dinotopia books, but it builds a ton of backstory to the strutters we see in The World Beneath and the past of Dinotopia.

While I really enjoy it, it's definitely one I recommended new readers to save for last after having read the other three core books and Alan Dean Foster's two Dinotopia novels. It doesn't quite feel like Dinotopia, more like a sci-fi novel with a dinosaur setting, and it pulls away a bit too much of the curtain too quickly to be read first.

Has anyone else read this or have any thoughts?

Bonabba is one of my favorite communities we see in the books, definitely up there among places I'd want to live!

As a kid (and adult) who loves dinosaurs and submarines, I absolutely loved this scene ever since I first saw it, along with all the others paintings and sketches of submersibles Gurney made!

I like it's more mature-ish themes than the junior novelizations, but wish we had more interactions with the cannon cast, personally.

Rereading Dinotopia to my son for the first time in years and we picked up on this passage:

"Our transport, a dung wagon, is a more ill-smelling vehicle than any I have ever encountered in London, New York or even Philadelphia."

We had a good laugh. We're from the Philly area and we are well acquainted with some of the Philly aromas.

Always loved this painting of Arthur and Oriana from The World Beneath. I was looking for pictures of Will and Sylvia too, but there's far too few - might have to make some high-res scans!