Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Waiting on Wednesday: Onyx and Ivory by Mindee Arnett & The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released!

This week's upcoming book spotlight is:
Onyx and Ivory by Mindee Arnett
Publication Date: May 15th, 2018
Balzer + Bray
512 pages
Pre-order: Amazon Book Depository 
From Goodreads:

Onyx and Ivory
"They call her Traitor Kate. It’s a title Kate Brighton inherited from her father after he tried to assassinate the high king of Rime.
 Cast out of the nobility, Kate now works for the royal courier service. Only the most skilled ride for the Relay and only the fastest survive, for when night falls, the drakes—deadly flightless dragons—come out to hunt. Fortunately, Kate has a secret edge: She is a wilder, born with forbidden magic that allows her to influence the minds of animals. 

And it’s this magic that leads her to a caravan massacred by drakes in broad daylight—the only survivor Corwin Tormaine, the son of the king. Her first love, the boy she swore to forget after he condemned her father to death. 

With their paths once more entangled, Kate and Corwin must put the past behind them to face this new threat and an even darker menace stirring in the kingdom."



The cover alone for this book is simply gorgeous and would probably make me want to buy it, but I think it also sounds rather fascinating as well. Working as a royal courier, drakes, influencing animals... I am all in for this one!

and...


The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte
Publication Date: April 24th, 2018
William Morrow
416 pages
Pre-order: Amazon Book Depository 
From Goodreads:

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
"A sweeping and groundbreaking history of the age of dinosaurs, from one of our finest young scientists.

The dinosaurs. 66 million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome and spectacular creatures vanished. Today their extraordinary true story remains one of our planet’s great mysteries. 

In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years, Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field—discovering ten new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork—masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a book for the ages. 

Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period—into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.” 

Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur research—which he calls “a new golden age of discovery”—and offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China. 

An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come."

Unfortunately, I never learned much about dinosaurs in school. I'm not sure why they weren't covered, but my knowledge of things related to dinosaurs is shockingly poor--The Land Before Time and the movie Dinosaur (the 2000 one) are my biggest reference points up to this point. I think this book might be a fantastic way to start rectifying that and I can't wait for it to come out.

What do you think about this upcoming release? What are your anticipated upcoming releases?


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3 comments:

  1. I've been getting more into nonfiction lately, so The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs sounds really interesting! I get most of my dino knowledge from Jurassic Park, haha!

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  2. i fell in love with dinosaurs as a kid at school. When the teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I tended to say T Rex or pteradactyl!

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  3. Onyx and Ivory is already on my TBR, but the dinosaur one looks awesome, definitely adding to TBR

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