Best scene ever.
Yeesh, that’s pretty granular, and I rather imagine my opinion is far from constant! However, the one that immediately sprang to mind when I ran my eyes over my bookcases is the climax of the Dresden Files novel Dead Beat, when wizard Harry Dresden reanimates and rides a friggin Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton. Named Sue. How awesome is that? Answer: Very awesome.
“What a mess,” Butters said. He glanced behind us, at the broken brick and debris and wreckage of the museum’s front doors. “Is she all right?”
“One way to find out,” I growled. “Ha, mule!”
I laid my left hand on the rough, pebbled skin of my steed and willed it forward. Te saddle lurched, and I clutched hard with my other hand to stay on.
the first few steps were the worst. The saddle sat at a sharp incline not too unlike that on a rearing horse. But as my mount gathered speed, the length of her body tilted forward, until her spine was almost parallel with the ground.
I didn’t know this before, but as it turns out, Tyrannosaurs can really haulass.
She might have been as long as a city bus, but Sue, despite her weight, moved with power and grace. As I’d called forth energy-charged ectoplasm to clothe the ancient bones, they had become covered in sheets of muscle and a hide of heavy, surprisingly supple quasi-flesh. She was dark grey, and there was a ripple pattern of black along her head, back, and flanks, almost like that of a jaguar. And once I had shaped the vessel, I had reached out and found the ancient spirit of the predator that had animated it in life.
Animals might not have the potential power of human remains. But the olderr the remains, the more magic can be drawn to fill them – and Sue was sixty-five million years old.
She had power. She had power in spades.
Dresden then rides Sue into battle and whups the bad guys, and it is awesome. Because, well, Everything’s Better with Dinosaurs. WARNING: that is a tvtropes.org link. Follow at your own risk.