Restless and fire-hearted, ten-year-old Sierra Nevada Smith was always chasing monsters, whether through the pages of her favorite books or in the woods behind the secluded California town where she grew up. Fantastic new worlds opened for her, however, when, after a near-tragedy, she discovered the films of legendary stop-motion animator Russell Boylan.

Ten years later, she finds herself working aboard a yacht, adrift at sea and in life, her peers nicknaming her the ‘Monster Girl’: a sad consolation for her own stunted career as a stop-motion animator in this era of computer-generated effects. When their boat is mysteriously pulled through a corridor of fog, the crew finds themselves deposited on the shores of an extraordinary island, a place where the stomping, roaring, clambering dinosaurs and creatures of Russell Boylan’s classic films have been relegated to live beyond script or screen, and to evolve.

And it is here that Sierra discovers not only an incredible power, but what may be her purpose.