I have a confession to make. I am extremely bad at time travel. Not engaging in actual time travel of course, but getting my head around the details of it. I get very confused! Dinosaur Knights contains time travel, dinosaurs and medieval knights - so I was a little nervous about reading it. But I shouldn't have worried. This snappy, action-packed novel from Brisbane author Michael Gerard Bauer takes place in the past and the future. The chapters are so short and clear I always knew exactly where I was in time and space.

The future sees the ambitious and slightly loopy Professor Shaw plan to bring a dinosaur into the present for only a few seconds. His time machine is as big as a football oval and is equipped with hundreds of cameras to record the dinosaur, before sending it straight back to its own time. Of course something goes wrong, and the dinosaur winds up stranded in the forests surrounding a medieval village. When the very hungry and very confused dinosaur kills a government official, the town eccentric William O'Dale is blamed. O'Dale's sons Roland and Oswald embark on a mission to find the dinosaur (which everyone thinks is a dragon) and prove their father's innocence. At the same time, in the future Professor Shaw is desperately trying to locate the lost dinosaur and send it back to its proper time.

The main characters in Dinosaur Knights are believable and likeable. I found myself really cheering Roland and Oswald on, as they are classic underdogs. The government officials are all corrupt and lots of people in the village regard their family with suspicion. Roland and Oswald are very different from each other, which sometimes leads to some very funny dialogue. If you like funny, fast-paced and suspenseful books, then you will really like Dinosaur Knights.