**This blog contains adult language and description of...ahem...adult activities.**
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to have the story completely and utterly spoiled.
From the Back of the Book: Beautiful geologist Annabelle struggles with human connection. But when she finds herself assigned to a quarry worked by a crew of revivified dinosaurs, she discovers it may not be a human connection she's searching for after all.
This book was published in 2022 and this is my first time reading it. I've read and recapped Faust before, though. We did Tyrannosaurus Sext on this blog back in January. When I entered this book on Goodreads, I discovered it has more than one cover. The cover I see on my Kindle has a woman with a long blonde ponytail wearing some kind of slinky dress with an interesting strap detail in the back. The Goodreads cover is a brunette in a backless dress. I wonder why they changed it? I guess we'll see if our protagonist has blonde or brunette hair.
We begin with our protagonist Annabelle on a train leaving Chicago. She's lived in the big city for awhile but it's never felt like home. She tells us that she's always had trouble fitting in with and relating to other people. Sometimes it feels like she doesn't know how to be human.
Same, girl, same.
As she stares out the train window, she sees dinosaurs in the distance. In this universe, they've been brought back to life and they perform various jobs. These dinosaurs seem to be building a bridge. Annabelle is fascinated and wishes she had a friend to share her excitement with. No one has ever understood her fascination with rocks and bugs and animals.
With the road crew of dinosaurs behind her, Annabelle turns her attention to her tablet so she can look over the brief for her first solo field assignment. She's headed to a small town near St Louis to evaluate some old mines in order to determine if they can be turned into a quarry for extracting silica. The company has already hired an excavation crew of dinosaurs to work on the project. Seems a little premature since it hasn't even been determined if the mines will be useful in any way.
Annabelle is nervous. She's been the assistant on similar projects, but this is the first time she's actually going to have to interact with other people....and dinosaurs. She's afraid her awkwardness will make things difficult and she'll fail at her first attempt to head a project.
Annabelle arrives in town and walks to her hotel. She takes time to describe how huge and sweaty her breasts are and how they bounce as she walks. Okay. Good to know. She checks in and goes to her room. It sounds like every budget hotel room in existence.
When Annabelle finally gets around to describing herself, we find out that she doesn't match either book cover. She's definitely brunette but her hair is long and curly, not short and straight and she wears glasses. She mentions her massive knockers again and makes sure we know that she's skinny and has a tiny waist.
Sigh.
A man named Tom from H&J Mining Company shows up at the hotel to give her a ride to the site. The first thing Annabelle sees when they get there is a brachiosaurus (Bessie) in a hard hat carrying massive stones from the bottom of the quarry.
So they're already digging the quarry? I thought she was there to see if it could be done. Maybe she's only there to see if they can get silica out of it.
Nearby, she sees two Ankylosaurs (Hulk and Thing) hauling rocks away. I had to look this dino up. Apparently it's one of these guys.
Annabelle is silently freaking out in a good way. She can't believe she's this close to living dinosaurs. She tells us that they aren't as intelligent as humans but their cognitive abilities are greater than anyone had expected. She also tells us that they struggle to communicate with humans and speak their own dinosaur language. I don't think that was the case in the other book I read but maybe I'm misremembering. The dino crew has their own “village” near the site where they go while not on duty. Annabelle is extremely curious about how they live and specifically how they sleep.
There are 40 humans and 7 dinos working the site and Annabelle can't be assed to remember a single human's name but she knows all the dinos. Her favorite is a stegosaurus named Stego (imaginative, Faust). Somehow, despite just telling us that they can't really communicate with humans, she has a conversation with him and learns that he's never met another stegosaurus and he's lonely. She relates since she isn't like the other humans.
At the end of the day, Annabelle decides to stay on site rather than go back to the hotel. On one hand it makes sense since she doesn't have a vehicle, but she also doesn't have any clothes or a toothbrush or anything. Tom tries to talk her out of it but she's too fascinated by the dinos to leave. As soon as Tom drives off, she starts walking toward 'dino village'. Her goal is to make it to Stego's quarters despite the fact she wasn't invited.
Annabelle rings Stego's buzzer and waits for him to answer. He seems confused by her presence but invites her in. He speaks English, by the way, so I have no idea what Faust was going on about earlier. Annabelle tells us that Stego smells like dust but she likes it because it reminds her of ancient forests. His home is mostly just a big pile of cushions he can sleep on and a TV that he controls with foot pedals.
Stego's voice is deep and guttural because dino vocal cords weren't designed to say actual words. He welcomes her and waits for her to tell him what she's there for. She says she was thinking about how lonely he is and how much she relates to that. He says that he only wants love like everyone else and it turns her on. She's taller than him (his eyes are at boob level) so she attempts to give him a hug. I looked this up and....maybe? Because their heads are lower than their backs, it's possible if she is tall and he is one of the smaller species of stego that he'd be eye-to-boob with her.
Stego asks her if she's there to talk or fuck and she says fuck. He tosses her onto the pile of cushions and she quickly takes all her clothes off. He steps over her so she's looking up at the underside of him. This seems super dangerous to me, but I won't yuck her yum.
Annabelle is nervous – not just because Stego could crush her at any moment, but because she has no idea what dino....ahem....nuggets (if you know what I mean) look like. She looks down by Stego's tail and sees a slit open up, allowing two long, thick....ahem....fossils (if you know what I mean) to emerge. She slithers down to check things out and then gets on her hands and knees and lines up with his “throbbing pink presence”.
I can't even with Faust right now.
Pink presence? That's worse than anything I come up with.
He's concerned because he can tell he's hurting her but she adjusts fast and starts to enjoy herself immensely. It's all pretty basic until he “dislodged an amount of seed that could easily fill a bucket” with enough force to shoot her off him like a champagne cork.
For fuck's sake, Faust.
Two weeks pass. Annabelle is headed home but she tells Tom that she'll be back soon. She's going to be moving there permanently to continue the work with the quarry. Tom is surprised that she wants to leave the big city for their small town but he's glad. Since she's been around, Stego's been happier.
And the book just ends there. I was expecting dino babies or something. I mean, there was an entire bucket of seed.
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