Skye Melki-Wegner, Survival (The Deadlands #3), Walker Books, April 2024, 286 pp., RRP $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781529518597
Skye Melki-Wegner is an experienced YA author, and this novel is the third and final of a middle-grade trilogy from her hand. An Arts-Law graduate from Melbourne, and an ex-museum employee, skye Melki-Wegner has been inspired by dinosaurs to create this epic tale of a band of prehistoric characters caught in a complex series of battle across their homelands and beyond. The novel comes with a map of the lands of Cretacea so that the reader can know where the battles are taking place and where the greatest hazards lie.
At the beginning of this instalment, five young dinosaurs are coming back to their home herds after great trials in the Carrion Kingdom: Eleri (an oryctodromeus), Sorielle (an ankylosaur), Tortha (a triceratops), Lerithon (a towering sauropod), and Zyre (a tiny winged pterosaur). They bring with them a rag-tag bunch of survivorsaurs. There is treachery and misunderstanding ahead of them and dangers coming at their homelands.
They have a great truth to tell, but they are outcasts. It will take all their strength, wisdom and guile to triumph. Will Lerithon, the most powerful of them all, have the strength at the end to do what must be done? Will they have to destroy their homeland in order to reveal the truth? Will warring kingdoms come together? Can a home be repaired when wars have been raging for as long as anyone can remember? And what to do with the desire for revenge? Where, finally, will Eleri and Lerithon depart for – the Unknown North or the Unseen South?
These are deeply human and societal questions, but the fun of it is that talking dinosaurs are doing all that mighty work, the worst and best of it. Recommended for readers of fantasy, 8 to 12 years.
Reviewed by Kevin Brophy
