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3.43 AVERAGE
3.43 AVERAGE
I watched the Jurassic Park (1993) and Congo (1995) films as a kid. I enjoyed these films based on Michael Crichton's stories. To actually have the whole story is so much more satisfying and complete. There is a lot more tech talk and more presence of the foreign competitors in the story. You'd think that since the book was published in 1980 that the tech talk wouldn't go in one ear and out the other, but some of it did go into detail that I skimmed over.
If you've seen the film: It is exciting to go through the story again. I sort of forgot how each conflict was solved as I arrived at scenes I remembered from the film. The biggest highlight was to see Amy the gorilla return to her roots of Congo Africa. At least, if no one found any diamonds, Amy's experience could lead to a better understanding of gorillas and animals returning home after confinement. Next, I'm reading Jurassic Park and maybe the Lost World after that.
If you've seen the film: It is exciting to go through the story again. I sort of forgot how each conflict was solved as I arrived at scenes I remembered from the film. The biggest highlight was to see Amy the gorilla return to her roots of Congo Africa. At least, if no one found any diamonds, Amy's experience could lead to a better understanding of gorillas and animals returning home after confinement. Next, I'm reading Jurassic Park and maybe the Lost World after that.
One of my favorite Crichton books so far. Absolutely fantastic.
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Michael does an amazing job of building suspense with a lot of scientific research in Congo. It had a slow start for me, but was addicting once I got going. I wanted to tickle Amy
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
A fun read. Not the biggest fan of Crichton's writing style- Plot driven over character driven. Nevertheless it had some great descriptions of the Congolese jungle, which served as a great escape from modern life, but the story suffered from long-winded and unnecessarily technical tangents that ruined the pacing and immersion.
Trigger warnings: eyeball trauma, death, blood, gore, animal death, discussion of animal experimentation, colonialism, explosions, gun violence, mentions of cannibalism, death of a friend
22/12/2021
I recently made the absolute rookie mistake of watching the 1995 movie adaptation of this book. And boy howdy, was it awful. I mean, it features Tim Curry as a moustache-twirling Romanian, so it could be worse. But it could also have been not shit. You know?
Anyway, my rewatch prompted a desire to reread the book. But after my last read, I got rid of my print copy because, as I mentioned, it's hideously dated. But the audiobook was on Scribd and I figured why the hell not. On the whole, the audiobook was a decent choice. I could have done without the narrator doing accents for the dialogue of the African porters or pronouncing "consortium" as "consor-shum" EVERY. FUCKING. TIME but the internet has informed me that that's the American pronunciation so I suppose I'll have to swallow my rage (Y'ALL ARE *WRONG* JFC).
Is it problematic? Yes. But it was published in 1980, and as much as millennials like to think that was 20 years ago, it really really wasn't. And honestly? It wasn't as bad as I anticipated. Although I definitely could have done without the smoking, drinking gorilla because it frankly just made me think of the end of George of the Jungle, which definitely removed some of the serious tone throughout...
5/3/2015
I'm really torn with this book. It's a pretty cool story. But it's also HIDEOUSLY dated. It was published in 1980 and is set in 1979, so it's totally understandable that it's dated. But it's also reeeeeeeally hard to take the story seriously when their highly sophisticated state of the art computer has a 256K memory. It's also hard to take the primatologists seriously when they let their research subject - Amy, the gorilla that they've trained to use sign language - smoke and drink. I just...really??
That said, the story - a trip to the Congo in search of an obscure type of diamond that goes horribly wrong courtesy of rival corporations, kidnapping, cannibals, and a killer new species trained as cops by a long dead civilisation - is pretty awesome. It's a throwback to the classic adventures of H. Rider Haggard with less racism and sexism. I kind of loved that Karen Ross, the female lead (unless you count Amy the champagne swigging gorilla), is the cold detached one who thinks the expedition should continue no matter the cost, while Peter is the innocent wide-eyed hero who panics over everything and is, in effect, the damsel in distress a lot of the time. Which I guess makes Amy the knight in shining armour, seeing as she saves Peter's life a bunch of times. Ha.
Essentially, it's horribly dated and it's hard to look past that in a story that relies so heavily on technology. But it's also action packed and pretty damned fun. It's definitely not Crichton's best work, but it's also not his worst. So, you know, there's that.
22/12/2021
I recently made the absolute rookie mistake of watching the 1995 movie adaptation of this book. And boy howdy, was it awful. I mean, it features Tim Curry as a moustache-twirling Romanian, so it could be worse. But it could also have been not shit. You know?
Anyway, my rewatch prompted a desire to reread the book. But after my last read, I got rid of my print copy because, as I mentioned, it's hideously dated. But the audiobook was on Scribd and I figured why the hell not. On the whole, the audiobook was a decent choice. I could have done without the narrator doing accents for the dialogue of the African porters or pronouncing "consortium" as "consor-shum" EVERY. FUCKING. TIME but the internet has informed me that that's the American pronunciation so I suppose I'll have to swallow my rage (Y'ALL ARE *WRONG* JFC).
Is it problematic? Yes. But it was published in 1980, and as much as millennials like to think that was 20 years ago, it really really wasn't. And honestly? It wasn't as bad as I anticipated. Although I definitely could have done without the smoking, drinking gorilla because it frankly just made me think of the end of George of the Jungle, which definitely removed some of the serious tone throughout...
5/3/2015
I'm really torn with this book. It's a pretty cool story. But it's also HIDEOUSLY dated. It was published in 1980 and is set in 1979, so it's totally understandable that it's dated. But it's also reeeeeeeally hard to take the story seriously when their highly sophisticated state of the art computer has a 256K memory. It's also hard to take the primatologists seriously when they let their research subject - Amy, the gorilla that they've trained to use sign language - smoke and drink. I just...really??
That said, the story - a trip to the Congo in search of an obscure type of diamond that goes horribly wrong courtesy of rival corporations, kidnapping, cannibals, and a killer new species trained as cops by a long dead civilisation - is pretty awesome. It's a throwback to the classic adventures of H. Rider Haggard with less racism and sexism. I kind of loved that Karen Ross, the female lead (unless you count Amy the champagne swigging gorilla), is the cold detached one who thinks the expedition should continue no matter the cost, while Peter is the innocent wide-eyed hero who panics over everything and is, in effect, the damsel in distress a lot of the time. Which I guess makes Amy the knight in shining armour, seeing as she saves Peter's life a bunch of times. Ha.
Essentially, it's horribly dated and it's hard to look past that in a story that relies so heavily on technology. But it's also action packed and pretty damned fun. It's definitely not Crichton's best work, but it's also not his worst. So, you know, there's that.
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Congo is an interesting Micheal Crichton novel, though it has a very slow start from the prologue to them arriving in Zaire. Not just slow, but, boring slow. It's very much an infodump about the technology and history. There's far too much emphasis on the history of exploration of the area of Africa where they are, and it's hard to tell what's real from historical accounts and what was made up by Crichton for the plot.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Misogyny, Blood
Moderate: Excrement, Cannibalism
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes