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A review by xmenji
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
5.0
***Slight spoilers if you still haven't read the book***
Okay, so I've loved the Jurassic Park movies for as long as I could remember and have watched it many times but I never actually read the novel until now. Let me tell you, this book is amazing. It has the right amount of technical information that should be in legitimate sci-fi novels (IMO) along with the right amount of suspense that would come from a story about a theme park filled with ancient, lethal, carnivorous creatures. Even though I've seen the movie a bunch of times and basically knew what was going to ensue, I couldn't help but be on the edge of my seat while reading this book. I think Crichton has a way of writing (at least in this book) that kept me absorbed from start to end. He seems to have a good grasp of writing his characters and making them come to life. My favorites, were of course, Ian Malcolm and Robert Muldoon as they stood out to most to me and were, to me, the characters who made the most sense in this story.
I guess the only gripes I have about this book was my annoyance towards Lex for half the book. She is good in the movie but completely different in the book. I just hated the fact that she was always screaming and shouting whenever the trio (Grant, Tim, and Lex) would try and sneak past the T-Rex and velociraptors. I know she's just a kid about 7 or 8 years old but c'mon... kids can't seriously be this insolent... can they? I kept wholeheartedly agreeing with Tim whenever he told her to shut up.
Grant was okay but he sometimes made me wonder where his priorities lay. I just don't understand how, when you witness a freakin Tyrannosaurus Rex break out of its paddock and start roaming freely around the park, how could you be more concerned about the velociraptors on the boat heading towards the mainland than the immediate situation you are in? I mean, I'm sure you could reason that the park handlers could somehow take care of it, but the power was down and the park was already going to hell. He still came off as completely unconcerned about Rexy. It would have been more believable if he was concerned about both things instead of one more than the other.
I was also a little disappointed that Rexy didn't make a come back in the end of the book after being tranquilized. I don't know, I was expecting (hoping) to see more of her one last time.
I also wasn't sure why the book needed to be dragged on further by the inclusion of the velociraptor colony discovered by Grant, Sattler and Gennaro. It didn't seem like it really added much to the story and it only caused the book to end somewhat abruptly. I mean, I still kind of enjoyed it, but I think the ending could have gone a little bit differently and it didn't really seem all that necessary to include that part into the book. Maybe it might make sense in the Lost World--which I also haven't read--but again, its inclusion by itself seemed a little pointless.
Anyways, it was an amazing read and I haven't had this much fun reading a book for a long time. Half the book could just be Ian Malcolm explaining Chaos Theory and I'd still eat it right up. I'll look forward to rereading this in the future.
Okay, so I've loved the Jurassic Park movies for as long as I could remember and have watched it many times but I never actually read the novel until now. Let me tell you, this book is amazing. It has the right amount of technical information that should be in legitimate sci-fi novels (IMO) along with the right amount of suspense that would come from a story about a theme park filled with ancient, lethal, carnivorous creatures. Even though I've seen the movie a bunch of times and basically knew what was going to ensue, I couldn't help but be on the edge of my seat while reading this book. I think Crichton has a way of writing (at least in this book) that kept me absorbed from start to end. He seems to have a good grasp of writing his characters and making them come to life. My favorites, were of course, Ian Malcolm and Robert Muldoon as they stood out to most to me and were, to me, the characters who made the most sense in this story.
I guess the only gripes I have about this book was my annoyance towards Lex for half the book. She is good in the movie but completely different in the book. I just hated the fact that she was always screaming and shouting whenever the trio (Grant, Tim, and Lex) would try and sneak past the T-Rex and velociraptors. I know she's just a kid about 7 or 8 years old but c'mon... kids can't seriously be this insolent... can they? I kept wholeheartedly agreeing with Tim whenever he told her to shut up.
Grant was okay but he sometimes made me wonder where his priorities lay. I just don't understand how, when you witness a freakin Tyrannosaurus Rex break out of its paddock and start roaming freely around the park, how could you be more concerned about the velociraptors on the boat heading towards the mainland than the immediate situation you are in? I mean, I'm sure you could reason that the park handlers could somehow take care of it, but the power was down and the park was already going to hell. He still came off as completely unconcerned about Rexy. It would have been more believable if he was concerned about both things instead of one more than the other.
I was also a little disappointed that Rexy didn't make a come back in the end of the book after being tranquilized. I don't know, I was expecting (hoping) to see more of her one last time.
I also wasn't sure why the book needed to be dragged on further by the inclusion of the velociraptor colony discovered by Grant, Sattler and Gennaro. It didn't seem like it really added much to the story and it only caused the book to end somewhat abruptly. I mean, I still kind of enjoyed it, but I think the ending could have gone a little bit differently and it didn't really seem all that necessary to include that part into the book. Maybe it might make sense in the Lost World--which I also haven't read--but again, its inclusion by itself seemed a little pointless.
Anyways, it was an amazing read and I haven't had this much fun reading a book for a long time. Half the book could just be Ian Malcolm explaining Chaos Theory and I'd still eat it right up. I'll look forward to rereading this in the future.