A review by suneaters
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

adventurous tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

The OG! I really enjoyed this book, perhaps even more so than the movie. The characters are great and even with some idea of what would happen and who would survive, I was still enthralled. I loved the cold opening and how all the pieces came together to show that a dinosaur was out and about attacking kids. I appreciated that the dinosaurs act like actual animals and not movie monsters like they have in some of the latest of this franchises movie entries (wasn’t Jurassic World just awful? Not even a cute kid and cool-looking dinos could save that flick). I was so interested in the idea that Timmy is the older one in the book. Hammond is also much more despicable here, but it really ramps up in his final perspective chapter; though
his death felt very contrived, I won’t say it bothered me much. Lex and Tim in the movie was clearly just Tim split in half, which was wise since Lex in the novel would annoy moviegoers. The movie lawyer is clearly Ed Regis without much Gennaro at all. Shame we didn’t get baby Rexy in the film or the velociraptor nest or the deal with the juvenile velociraptors on the ship. There’s a lot that was lost. The hunter survives, Malcolm dies, the lawyer lives, and there’s a lot of interesting dynamics between the characters.
 

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