"Pretty effective way of keeping things out - a cage with poisonous bars." - Matt Kearns

Matt Kearns, Carla Nero, a team of scientists, and film producer Maxwell Steinberg have managed to penetrate into a crater containing a lost world. Unfortunately their contact with the outside world is next to nil due to the crater being in the center of the largely unexplored Gran Chao Boreal. The team venture into the jungle contained in the crater with Matt and Carla seeking an environmental answer to the parasite that is laying waste to the outside world while Steinberg seeks to capture a live archaeopteryx or other exotic living fossil. Unfortunately for our explorers the lost world contains plenty of living fossils, most of whom are predators with the encroaching humans not high on the food chain.

As they penetrate deeper into the crater their numbers are whittled down as the local wild life finds new food is on the agenda. Is anyone going to survive a world where dinosaurs roam, insects are hungry and huge, and arachnids are out of your worst nightmare! Can Matt and Carla find their answer, and more importantly can they get that answer out of the crater before they become further food sources for a voracious world. There are wonders to be found, but the price is going to be steep, welcome to a lost world that makes Speilberg's Jurassic Park look like a petting zoo.

Greig Beck starts the second book in The First Bird trilogy off a little time after events portrayed in the first book. Our group of explorers are already inside the crater wall having worked out how to avoid the poisonous vines guarding the lost world. I was more than happy with this development as to be honest who wanted twenty or so pages of description of how they got through what had appeared to be a impenetrable barrier. We all know from the first book the egress point, so two thumbs up to Beck for not belabouring this aspect of the plot.

Guess when you read a book based on the concept of a lost world you are waiting on the monsters to arrive and are anticipating those monsters will be of the dinosaur variety. Beck does give us a dinosaur, yes just the one, but populates his lost world with creatures far more nightmarish, Speilberg you have been out "Jurassiced" Bro! We do get an early horse (Eohippus) and a hominid, but that's about it for the fluffy kitten end of the market, if insects aren't your thing then this book is going to have you changing your undies a couple of times. The Author is writing in a take no holds style with his monsters and got to say I was getting a chill on a couple of occasions as the descriptions were laced with venom.

Leading the monster parade is an early arachnid, the Mesothelae. Greig Beck seems to delight in describing scenes involving the overly large and predatory spider. Beck's prose presents the highly dangerous arachnid as a sinister villain that confronts our expedition on a number of occasions with the spiders coming out ahead. If you are arachnophobic then this book is going to present a lot of problems for you, Beck isn't pulling any punches when it comes to his arach-attack and I was certainly chilled by some of the scenes. There are bad ways to die; Beck has pretty much created one of the worst in this novel.

But the Author isn't finished with spiders, oh hell no, there are a number of other predators waiting to feast on errant expedition members. We do get dinosaurs, or at least one that remains elusively unidentified, a river monster that reminded me of something out of The Fellowship of the Ring, and to put the topping on this particular sundae of horrors more insect infestations toward the end of the book. Gore hounds are going to dine out on this book, plenty of gruesome deaths, some of which will quite likely add not so pleasant dreams to your nightly collection.

As should be apparent to anyone keeping up the second book in The First Bird trilogy is set in the "lost world" and that is pretty much what the narrative focuses on. Who knows what's going down in the civilised world, besides hints that things are starting to deteriorate, Beck uses quick references to indicate this - like air traffic being grounded indefinitely, which I was more than happy with. We have the third book to focus on the impact of the contagion that is currently sweeping across North America. So for anyone reading who digs the Jurassic misappropriation of dinosaur life forms you are in for a treat, though as pointed out we're talking more arachnid and less "terrible lizard".

About the only problem I had with this book, and once again this is me nit picking, was the solution to the parasite issue. It's bloody obvious from the get go but still takes a while for our Scientists to work it out. I wasn't overly stymied by this to be honest as the main focus of the book is the divergent life forms inhabiting the lost world Beck creates, so who cares as long as the main plot arc moves along, its all good. Guess I was also confused by the hominid, it appears in a couple of scenes and that's about it. Was expecting more importance than a bit of plot foreshadow to be honest, why introduce a novel idea and then simply leave it floating with no further impact?

Quick note that Maxwell Steinberg leaves a present for one of our explorers that remains undiscovered as the second book finishes. Looking forward to reading where Greig Beck takes that idea in the final book of the trilogy.

Once again I was having a hoot and a holler with Greig Beck, dude sure can write some engrossing prose, and who doesn't dig a lost world excursion. The Writer doesn't fall into the trap of simply including creatures from other similar works which is all to Beck's credit, so get ready to read a book that is pretty cool. I was engrossed from first page to last page, and was checking behind me on occasion, you'll know what I mean when you get stuck into Paradise. Full recommendation, Greig Beck shows how to write this sort of fiction, keeps the pace rocking along, and for sure has me fanging for the third book in the trilogy. It's been an awesome ride thus far; anyone got the movie rights yet?