Jurassic Park
by
Michael Crichton
[ Image is of the book cover: Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
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. . . . 5 Stars ]
SciFi // Thriller // Horror
Despite being a huge fan of the films, it never occurred to me to try reading the novel they were based on before now, and even then only at the urging of my partner J.
Having been in a bit of a reading slump this year, I figured I might as well give it a try– what’s the worst that could happen, after all: I don’t like it? I do like it?
Turns out, I LOVED IT!
It is so wildly different from the movies I grew up watching as a kid, but instead of ruining my nostalgia of them, it’s given me a whole new appreciation of both the films and the novel they’ve been based on.
This book TERRIFIED me!
If you know me at all, you’ll know that is a huge achievement. As a fan of horror who’s grown up watching ‘scary’ films since the age of 5, I’m pretty impervious to most things that come out, especially those of a visual media.
Books however? Every so often, there’s a novel that is so vivid, so immersive, that I’m drawn directly into the written word; living and breathing the events the characters are going through. Their terror becomes my terror. Their narrow escapes, their close calls, their loses, or their wins — all of this experienced as a shiver down the spine, a catching of the breath, a pounding of the heart.
It is beyond thrilling to find a novel that genuinely has me curling my toes because a part of me has been transported into the novel, and that part is currently being perused by a T-Rex more terrifying than any movie adaption has yet managed to capture.
Having read two Crichton books this year, Jurassic Park and the Andromeda Strain (3*), my only criticism of the author would be that his novels are solely focussed on the plot. There is little to no character development, so it is sometimes difficult to invest yourself in them.
With Jurassic Park, the plot was so overwhelmingly good that it didn’t matter: I enjoyed the characters, but it was all about the story for me, and in a way, their lack of development made it easy for me to put myself into the novel and experience the events they were going through.
With The Andromeda Strain, I found this a failing on the author’s part, as the novel was so heavily focussed on the science that, even with the ‘dumbed down’ analogies that allowed me to understand what was happening, I found myself disinterested in the story as a whole.
Never-the-less, I am excited to read more of Crichton’s work, and you can expect my adventures to continue with his best-selling sequel, The Lost World, which is high on my TBR list for 2021!
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