Gladiators: The Collected Prequels to The Dakotaraptor Riders

by Stant Litore

2000 years in our future, an empire's holiest festival is celebrated with dinosaur races and gladiatorial games on the backs of armored titans. These gladiators and the dinosaurs they ride become a visible display of the Republic's power, captive fighters adored by millions yet compelled to battle not only the tyrannosaurs and other genetically engineered beasts of the arena, but also the loneliness in their hearts. Yet Empire is a fragile thing. Tonight, on the red sands of the arena and inside the hollow asteroid where the dinosaurs are grown, the secrets these gladiators discover will shake their entire world. Join us aboard the orbital colosseums and meet Egret (Livia Tenning), Jaguar (Nyota Madaki), and Timberwolf (Mai Changying)! AUTHOR'S Gladiators is a prequel edition to the series The Dakotaraptor Riders; it includes three works of The Running of the Tyrannosaurs, Nyota's Tyrannosaur, and The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur. If you have a copy of the omnibus Colosseums for Dinosaurs, this book includes the same stories. Gladiators is a new edition (with some minor changes), released in celebration of the new series. The events in Gladiators happen in the same universe as The Dakotaraptor Riders, just a few solar systems over, in the heart of the empire that is invading the homeworld in the new series. As the series progresses, some characters from the prequels will make an appearance in the new novels. I hope you will enjoy these thrilling tales of dinosaurs and rebellion in the far future! PRAISE FOR THE PREQUELS For The Running of the "Wielding elegant prose and tightly-focused characters, Stant Litore cuts deep into the science-fiction realm of bio-engineered dinosaurs and high-tech bread and circuses with a physically enhanced female gladiator whose personal tragedy is as powerful as her victories in the arena. Her story echoes in the heart long after it is told." - Richard Ellis Preston, Jr., author of Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders For Nyota's "Stant Litore turns a concept that would be clunky, camp, or just plain weird in other hands into something as natural as feeling the stretch of your own muscles when you move..." - O.E. Tearmann, author of The Hands We're Given For The Screaming of the "This is a pulse-pounding story, a triumph of world-building - a story of gladiatorial combat and of bonds strange and transcendent. Without a doubt, one of the most enthralling stories I've come across." - Samuel Peralta, The Future Chronicles

Genres: Science Fiction

221 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 31, 2021

About the author

Stant Litore is the author of Ansible, The Running of the Tyrannosaurs, The Zombie Bible, and Dante’s Heart. Besides science fiction and fantasy, he has written the writers’ toolkits Write Worlds Your Readers Won’t Forget and Write Characters Your Readers Won’t Forget, as well as Lives of Unstoppable Hope and Lives of Unforgetting, and has been featured in Jeff Vandermeer’s Wonderbook: An Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction. He has served as a developmental editor for Westmarch Publishing and holds a Ph.D. in English. He lives in Aurora, Colorado with his wife and three children and is currently at work on his next novel.

Reviews

[O.E. Tearmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the elegance of a page out of The Art of War, this book has already enmeshed you in a world of watchful cameras, painfully unequal power structures, and genetically modified entertainment that is the prequel to the Dakotaraptors Series. And that’s all before you meet the protagonists.
This is one of the signatures of Stant Litore’s writing: through his use of language, he wraps you in moments. He turns a concept that would be clunky, camp or just plain weird in other hands into something as natural as feeling the stretch of your own muscles when you move. His focus on the personal aspect of tech in the lives of his characters gives the entire world an intuitive gravity of reality.

Oh, and by the way, did I mention the science used in here rocks? The genetic modifications to animals and plants fit the varied terraformed environments discussed in the book, and the technological augmentation made to the main character has an appropriate metabolic cost in the form of calorie requirements.

But Litore isn’t writing hard sci-fi: no info-dumps on what that thing that jumped out of the water or buzzed in the bushes was. Occasionally he even goes out on a limb and throws in names for animal species you have absolutely no reference for. Here, that actually works, because you’re already in the place: salt spray in your face or the smell of loam in your nose. At that point, a reader’s mind runs over the phrase ‘you will defend your family when the soar-whales leap over your boat’, says ‘soar-whale? Well of course there are alien whales here,’ and pictures whatever they like to fit their dream of the seas on Titan. There’s a magic in world building that leaves you a little room to do some of the dreaming yourself.

And once the world has grabbed you, you begin to know the people. there’s Nyota. There’s Jaguar. There’s a girl so honed by the whims of others that she has to be forgotten on a world filled with monsters to remember who she is.
Nyota’s story is given depth when we read the tale of of her trainer and elder sister in arms, Mai. Timberwolf. Such control, masking such roiling fire, is something that you’ll have to read to truly believe. And counterpointing each of them is the eerie, crystalline thinking of Egret, and the deeply wounded child she once was subsumed by the cold and driven woman she has become. Through the eyes of these three women, we can truly see all facets of the control measures an empire uses, and all the glittering facets of the human soul.

If you enjoyed Cloud Atlas, you’re going to like Gladiators. It has a similar blend of high dreams and gritty reality. Most of this story goes on inside the heads of the Daughters of Liberty as they navigate their personal circumstances. Sound boring? Not a chance. With the clear poignancy that cuts like a knife and cleanses like water, we watch these girls come through one shattering revelation after another and grow with each. And man, do they ever get shattered.
The higher musings are grounded nicely in the very visceral things each character thinks about as she fights to survive: I hate the taste of this meat, I love this tree, I need to run faster than my sister, this dinosaur hide is thick, I stink and I need a bath, I’m lost and that pisses me off, I’m going to be eaten by the nanites inside me if I don’t find food right f$%# now. This keeps the story real and allows the dreams each character has has a solid foundation on which to stand. The slow realizations about the culture the girls belong to are a powerful but not preachy social commentary, reminding us that words and concepts can be the wool pulled over our eyes. In this book we watch slaves worship Lady Liberty and cheer when blood is shed on her altars. In this culture, people destroy one another in the name of the Goddess Love. It’s a powerful image. Through these womens’ musings, we also get a clear look at what we really are as a species when all our tech and toys and social norms are stripped away. We’re hungry. We’re frightened. And we’re longing for something or someone to share life with. We need to bond so badly that we’ll form emotional ties to anything: a tree, a spear, a dinosaur. We want to love.

The revelation of each character in these interlinked tales goes on through the eyes of each central character, which has a wonderful and sometimes painful result. As Nyota grows in herself, each of the other characters grows and takes on new dimensions of complexity in her memories of them. Mai Changying begins as a stern trainer, respected and feared in Nyota’s mind. She grows into something evil, a purveyor of punishment, a jail-keeper with poison in her hands and steel in her eyes. Ultimately, she is only a woman, as helpless in the face of the system that created them both as Nyota was and just as determined. Nyota’s own father goes through a similar transformation: from simple memory of comfort to an inspiration, a bereft victim, a leader, then a horror. Eventually he too is only a man doing what he can. The same experience is had through Mai’s eyes and emotions, and Egret’s clear, distant perspective gives us the final polish on these interlinked gems, letting us truly and clearly see how it would feel to stand staring at a crowd who believes they adore you, and see the entire system teaching them to scream for you as a gigantic machine in which all people are cogs. It will send a shiver down your spine. But Mai’s ferocious discipline will show you honor, and Nyota will show you the power of connection and love in the face of overwhelming odds.
It’s easy to forget the deep urges that drive us to do all that is good and all that is evil, but this book reminds us. At rock bottom, humans possess just five things: Fear, resolve, anger, wit, and empathy. By the end of the story, these Daughters Of Liberty hold these things in balance. I was glad to write this review, because it let me stay in this world a little longer. This book needs to be on the shelf of anyone who dreams about the future, the past, or the possibilities. Give the little kid who loved dinosaurs and space ships in you a treat.

[Chuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book in a GoodReads drawing. The writing is solid, but the concept of naked ladies riding Tyrannosaurus rexes just didn’t motivate me. I stopped about 50 ages in.

I’ll stipulate it is better written than most F&SF and that the ladies are not there for ogling; they are rather of the “mighty thews, sinews of steel” school.

[Sparrow Knight · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little too much undercurrent of sex for my taste, way too much focus on breasts, and the thorough intertwining of televised sex and competitive violence are really not to my taste. The middle of the book is a heroes journey to self-discover and freedom, which I enjoyed, but it doesn’t make up for the sense of this being a guy’s sexual fantasy.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Hunger Games meet Tyrannosaurus in Space. This book is part fantasy and part science-fiction. It is well written and has strong female characters. It will remind you of the kid you used to be who loved dinosaurs and traveling through space.

[Matthew P · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title implies, the is a collected set of three prequels to Start Litore's Dakotaraptor Riders. The concept is fairly straightforward - what would happen if dinosaurs were brought back to life and used in sporting events.

This was my introduction to Litore's works. What first struck me was his literary style. He is able to masterfully weave together prose that is fun to read. It is for this reason, I will be reading more of his work in the future.

Of the three stories, the middle (and longest) was my favorite. It tells the fight for survival of a Rider who gets left behind on a training compound. It was quite well done and I would recommend reading this one first.

The other two focus on individual athletic events and focus on how the narrator in each case maneuvers around the track. Unfortunately neither of these stories lack the depth of the middle story.

Note: I received this book as part of a Goodreads giveaway.