Isaiah Young

I struggled to get into this one even though my paleontologist friend really liked it and recommended it to me. About one third of it was really interesting and informative. The next third was repetitive. How many times do you actually need to say what Pachycephalosaurus means? The last third just felt like name dropping. Maybe if I was more involved in paleontology it would matter to me, but it didn't.

It was pretty cool to hear the perspective of someone kind of down in the trenches. Most of the time you hear the stories of the astronauts or the managers in charge. But Don Eyles seems like he was pretty low on the org chart (when there even was one). It would also be cool to hear about a technician that built the fuel tanks or something.

I overall enjoyed it. It felt like peak 90s LDS romance fiction.

I liked the theme of coming to understand racist attitudes as a white man because that's where I'm at. But I didn't love that he ends up with just another white girl. There were no barriers actually crossed. All throughout he directly compares her to Lamanites, and that feels weird and antiquated to me today. It also felt like her decision to be baptized was rushed and white savior complexy. But her conversion was genuine.

I liked that the main plot point of being in danger of losing their lives was only the first little less than two thirds of the book and they weren't happily ever after by the end of that. Relationships are hard and I think they are way more interesting to read about when things don't end with a tidy wrap up.

Winthrop Packard is no Aldo Leopold. I didn't like his style as much and his observations seemed more anecdotal than related to science.