SYNOPSIS
An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price.
Until something goes wrong. . . .
WHAT I LOVED MOST
Now we move onto Jurassic Park, a novel many only know because of the movie adaptation. Which makes explaining the premise of this book quite easy. A team of experts assembled by a wealthy genetic engineering corporation are brought to a zoo/theme park where dinosaurs are reconstructed by skilled technicians when accidents put the feasibility of the park opening at risk. Several accidents, caused by glitches and people alike, throw the park out of control, and now the team must fight for their survival.
Before we move deeper, I must comment that the book and the movie are not very similar. They both feature the basic premise, and most of the characters have the same names, but the plot doesn’t always match up and many characterizations are extremely different. Just because you watched the movie, doesn’t mean you will know the plot of the book, and concurrently, you may be a fan of one and not the other.
On a personal note, I found this book to be a thrilling novel. It had an interesting premise that was expanded into an interesting plot. You have a large cast, some of which will be likable and some not, that the narrative moves around. The shifting narrators allow us to follow both the personal feelings of the cast and the action, while also creating an atmosphere of suspense as the reader becomes increasingly aware of events and dangers that the current narrator may fall victim to without realizing it. It was a fun novel, not really taking that much effort to finish. I really enjoyed the plot, though that may be my bias speaking, due to my interest in dinosaurs.
LOVING CRITICISM
The book may seem dull due to the in-depth descriptions afforded to the scientific processes, a fact that the novel even admits though the young narrator Tim to be boring, and the characters feel stale and overused, particularly if you are familiar with Crichton’s work. You certainly see it in Dr. Ellie Sattler, who frankly reads like most of the women created by Crichton.
The archaisms may be a little amusing, such as the top-of-the-line computers used to automate the islands are actually inferior to most modern smartphones, and there are several inaccuracies with the dinosaurs.
The final criticism is that the theme of the dangers of abusing technology can get boring, as it’s basically the same theme that every other Crichton book. As I once heard someone describing the differences between book and film (though I can’t recall who,) for every speech about it that Malcom gives in the movie, he gives nearly five in the book, and I feel this can get preachy after awhile.
MY FAVORITE CHARACTER
My favorite character would have to be Dr. Alan Grant. I feel he is the most likeable and is actually very different from the movie. Instead of being a young professional man who dislikes children, he is a middle aged, friendly, casual and bearded widower and has a healthy love of children, particularly those fascinated by dinosaurs.
He has a similar role in the movie, where he is a paleontologist who briefly met years ago and is funded by John Hammond, and is invited to the island. During the chaos he is forced to watch after Tim and Lex, and later becomes one of the leaders of the group attempting to survive the dinosaurs.
SHOULD YOU READ THIS BOOK?
While I feel this book to be a bit slow in the beginning, it quickly makes up for it once at the titular park, and I feel it to be a fun, if long, and exciting thriller that I would recommend to many.
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