Item - Last of the Dinosaurs

This book really didn't need to be written. It covers a lot of the same territory as the other dinosaur-related book in the series; I suspect it was only written because dinosaurs sell and by this time the series was most likely waning in popularity. Among other problems, there are a lot of seemingly arbitrary decisions and a couple of largely pointless and uninteresting trips to the 20th century. The ultimate solution to the mystery is believable and realistic, however, and makes up for a number of the book's flaws.

One peculiar thing -- this is one of the earliest gamebooks I owned, and I remember reading it seemingly forever as a child and never finishing it. I would pick it up, read for a while, put it down for a few weeks, then pick it back up again and still never finish. I assumed until recently that this was simply due to a lot of backward loops in the book, but now that I've seen Julien Peter Benney's map, it is apparent that the book has a strong forward momentum with only one backward loop. I must have either picked up reading from the wrong page every time I returned to the book in my childhood, or I was a slower reader than I thought! In any case, I take back my prior complaint about the book sending the reader in loops forever.

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