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alleseter 's review for:
Jurassic Park
by Michael Crichton
Make no mistake about it: this book is a thriller. Its main goal is suspense, nothing else. Crichton wastes no time to evoke the suspense right from the start - even the introduction fulfills that purpose. Something will go terribly wrong. Reading the first part is just waiting for it to happen.
I never read thrillers, and 'Jurassic Park' clearly shows why: the second half of the book is solely devoted to people trying to stay alive among dangerous dinosaurs, making it an incredibly boring read. I crave for more than wondering if anybody remains alive or not.
That Crichton's personae are shallow, uninteresting or even extremely annoying doesn't help. The two female characters are the worst: one, paleontologist Ellie Sattler, doesn't do much more than nursing Malcolm, the other, girl Lex figures as the book's version of the scream girl of fifties monster movies: she's dumb, inconsiderate, and has to be rescued over and over.
However she pales compared to mathematician Malcolm, who figures as Crichton's own voice. Referring to chaos theory, which in Crichton's mind equals Murphy's law, Malcolm keeps endless 'told you so'-lectures, showing Crichton's bleak anti-scientific vision, blaming almost everything mankind has done wrong on science alone. This incredibly ignorant vision leads to appalling prose amid the endless suspense passages.
Even these passages, supposedly the novel's strong point, are erratic: at once someone mentions Velociraptors, they're suddenly there, even though they weren't missed before. And even after they've gotten safe, Grant and others go out into the park, facing dangers again, leading to a long superfluous passage, until they suddenly stop in order to being rescued by the Costa Rican military. It just doesn't make any sense.
It's a pity Crichton chose the dinosaur theme to show the dangers of the emerging science of biotechnology, which certainly has its downside. He could easily make a much more realistic thriller, involving malicious corporations and food production, the patenting of existing genes etc. But Crichton chose the fantasy of dinosaurs, which are more spectacular, but less fitting to make his critical message come across.
For biologists the first part of the book may be a fun read, however. The DNA processes are described fairly accurately, and Dr. Grant is clearly inspired by paleontologists Robert Bakker and Gregory S. Paul, whom Crichton had consulted for the novel. It's thanks to Paul the novel's most terrible monsters are called Velociraptor, not Deinonychus, for the author had just advocated the merging of the two genera.
'Jurassic Park' is a shallow, disappointing book. Two stars though for its vivid descriptions of dinosaurs, even though Crichton's portrait of the Velociraptors is utterly preposterous, inflating the creatures' intelligence to unbelievable heights.
I never read thrillers, and 'Jurassic Park' clearly shows why: the second half of the book is solely devoted to people trying to stay alive among dangerous dinosaurs, making it an incredibly boring read. I crave for more than wondering if anybody remains alive or not.
That Crichton's personae are shallow, uninteresting or even extremely annoying doesn't help. The two female characters are the worst: one, paleontologist Ellie Sattler, doesn't do much more than nursing Malcolm, the other, girl Lex figures as the book's version of the scream girl of fifties monster movies: she's dumb, inconsiderate, and has to be rescued over and over.
However she pales compared to mathematician Malcolm, who figures as Crichton's own voice. Referring to chaos theory, which in Crichton's mind equals Murphy's law, Malcolm keeps endless 'told you so'-lectures, showing Crichton's bleak anti-scientific vision, blaming almost everything mankind has done wrong on science alone. This incredibly ignorant vision leads to appalling prose amid the endless suspense passages.
Even these passages, supposedly the novel's strong point, are erratic: at once someone mentions Velociraptors, they're suddenly there, even though they weren't missed before. And even after they've gotten safe, Grant and others go out into the park, facing dangers again, leading to a long superfluous passage, until they suddenly stop in order to being rescued by the Costa Rican military. It just doesn't make any sense.
It's a pity Crichton chose the dinosaur theme to show the dangers of the emerging science of biotechnology, which certainly has its downside. He could easily make a much more realistic thriller, involving malicious corporations and food production, the patenting of existing genes etc. But Crichton chose the fantasy of dinosaurs, which are more spectacular, but less fitting to make his critical message come across.
For biologists the first part of the book may be a fun read, however. The DNA processes are described fairly accurately, and Dr. Grant is clearly inspired by paleontologists Robert Bakker and Gregory S. Paul, whom Crichton had consulted for the novel. It's thanks to Paul the novel's most terrible monsters are called Velociraptor, not Deinonychus, for the author had just advocated the merging of the two genera.
'Jurassic Park' is a shallow, disappointing book. Two stars though for its vivid descriptions of dinosaurs, even though Crichton's portrait of the Velociraptors is utterly preposterous, inflating the creatures' intelligence to unbelievable heights.