‘The narrative picks up towards the end, propelling us into the atomic age and passages of visionary goofiness.’

—The Times

'So begins a fluctuating symbiotic relationship that Liu develops through knowingly disarming narrative leaps.'

—China South Morning Post

'Deceptively simple and brilliantly clever, I simply adored it'

—LoveReading4Kids

Editor's Note 

What does it mean to be strong? What does it mean to be weak? To live? To perish? Hundreds of millions of years ago, did the rise and fall of a civilization built by dinosaurs and ants mirror the past, present, and future of the human world?

Two species--one colossal, one miniscule--intertwined, from the earliest, most primitive communication and cooperation, to conflict and bloodshed in the days before the end of the world. What gave rise to the myth of their unification? What caused the myth to crumble?

A civilization founded by two radically different species, an eternity in the making, is destroyed in a matter of moments. It is romantic and exquisite in its longevity, it is grand and violent in its transience.

Synopsis

The story begins on a summer’s day in the distant Cretaceous period, when a colony of ants forages for food between a dinosaur’s teeth. Uncertain but anxious for relief, the dinosaur accepts the “toothpicking service” offered by the ants, and a seemingly ordinary day ushers in the era of Cretaceous civilization.

Over tens of thousands of years of evolution, the dinosaurs develop brains capable of exceptional creativity, but remain hampered by their motor skills; the ants master fine, dexterous manipulation, but show a distinct lack in creative thought. Working together, the two species build a technologically advanced civilization. In the society founded and led by the two species, the dinosaurs and ants depend upon each other for existence as together they push forward the wheels of a great social machine.

But the rapid development of their joint civilization creates severe environmental pollution and resource shortages. As two dinosaur empires cast covetous eyes at each other and lock horns over resources, the threat of nuclear war hangs over the entire world. The more cooperatively minded ants lodge protests with the two dinosaur powers and urge nuclear disarmament and an end to nuclear confrontation. When that proves futile, the ants make a last-ditch effort to wipe out the dinosaurs’ civilization. Meanwhile, the dinosaurs, fearful of the ants’ monopoly on sophisticated technology, are desperate to rid themselves of the ants and assert their dominion over the world. In the end, these two species that once lived in harmony turn against each other, like fire and water....