Jurassic Park

A really fun and mostly fast-paced read--you can throw a frisbee through the various plot holes, but it's easy to forgive for pure entertainment value.

A few complaints: the two females in this story are either 1. completely flat and do almost nothing to move the story forward or 2. so annoying you wish for a velocoraptor attack. Also, Ian Malcolm is maybe the worst written character I've ever come across, and I found myself fast forwarding through every speech after the third one. It's almost as if Crichton had never heard of a metaphor, which his book may have served as to some degree had he not shoved self righteous exposition down our throats at every opportunity.

But yes. Totally a fun ride.

I hadn’t heard about this book until the first movie was released. My initial reaction was, “it’s a horror flick with dinosaurs – no way!” Luckily, I ended up seeing the movie at a dorm party after it was released on DVD. I enjoyed the movie, despite my misgivings and thought, “how bad can the book be?” Turned out that, as is often the case, the book was far superior to the film.

I thought it would be a horror novel, but Jurassic Park is actually a science fiction thriller. A SciFi thriller that made me a loyal fan of Michael Crichton. John Hammond has found a way to recreate living dinosaurs. And he is far less grandfatherly and sentimental than the film version. He’s a businessman out to make money, who will let nothing show more stand in his way. One of the things that makes the book so much better is the emphasis on the science. In the movie viewers are like, “yeah sure, they make dinosaurs, disbelief suspended.” In the book, Crichton lays it out with creepy realism, formulas and charts. At some points, it becomes a little too much and I actually skimmed overly some highly technical bits, but overall it adds to the credibility of the story. Crichton also lays out the computer science in more detail, such as the motions sensor tracking, the flaws in a mainframe system, etc. I was drawn into the novel in a way not possible with the movie. The character development is also top notch. Ian becomes more than a loony fringe scientist, and Hammond is much better as a quasi-villain. However, the kids got on my last nerve. They weren’t as well developed as the adult characters, too mired in stereotypical “kidness.” The little girl’s constant whining was really annoying . However, that was the only aspect of the novel that I didn’t care for. The dialog was great, the action sequences vivid and the ending more than satisfying.

Overall, this was a tight, fast paced novel. Crichton obviously did his research, making the science very real, but the action and adventure made the story come alive. With the advent of cloning, the book still stands strong today. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys a good thriller. show less

Claro que he visto la película y tal vez por esa razón no me había dado por leer este libro, sin embargo, después de haberme leído varios libros después de haber visto la peli y que me dejarán buen sabor de boca, me he animado y no me arrepiento.
Aunque la base de la historia es la misma que en la película, tienes sus diferencias, pero creo que lo que más me ha gustado Vs. La película es precisamente que el libro no es una historia infantil, como siempre me ha parecido la película, es más bien una historia, si de ciencia ficción, pero más bien bastante terrorífica, al imaginarte estar ahí perdido en la isla rodeado de animales prehistóricos, no solo es que son animales grandes, es que Crichton los pinta tal como supongo show more serían en su momento, animales grandes, bestiales, cazadores y algunos de ellos bastante inteligentes.
Sin duda es un libro que te mantiene siempre comiéndote las uñas, la acción no termina de una página a otra y eso sí, todo lo que tenía que salir mal, sale mal el mismo día, cosa que resulta en algo un poquitín exagerado, porque, honestamente, se supone que la isla tiene varios años funcionando y precisamente este día todo falla, absolutamente todo.
Me gustan muchísimo más los personajes en el libro y lo cierto es que logré ponerles cara a todos y ninguno fue el de la película, eso es porque realmente son bastante diferentes a como se presentan en a la peli, me refiero a sus personalidades.
Malcom en algún momento presenta una reflexión, ciertamente muy profunda, sobre la vanidad del hombre queriendo ganarle a la ciencia, supongo que de algún modo ese es, al final, el mensaje que Crichton quiere dejar con su libro, que no es para nada ser pretensioso, pero pues ¿por qué no dejar un mensaje en un libro de entretenimiento?
Nunca he visto ninguna secuela en la pantalla, con la primera película tuve, pero me parece que, si continuaré con los libros, el final de este realmente te deja con ganas de continuar.
Entiendo que hay demasiados libros por ahí y que habiendo tantos pendientes muchos pensarán que para que leer un libro donde ya se conoce la historia o el final, pero si tienen ganas de leer algo fácil, ágil, divertido, entretenido y que ciertamente no es exactamente como la película, pues aquí lo tienen. show less

Very good. The short chapters make the pace feel fast even during the sections when little is happening, and the story is written in such a manner that the reader (even should you not have seen the film the novel spawned) cannot help but know with certainty how bad things are about to get long before the characters do -- well, excepting perhaps Ian Malcolm. This gives an underlying tension that further adds to the page-turning feel of the story, which is particularly impressive considering the novel's rather many academic asides about everything from computer history to mathematical paradigms.

My main complaint, I suppose, is the almost complete lack of emotional ramification for traumas and deaths. Whenever a character dies, people show more (even people with no experience with such things) behave with a stiff upper lip 'well, that's a shame, let's soldier on' attitude that I might buy from hardened veteran soldiers or explorers mentally prepared for danger, but that seems a bit off from academics, engineers and lawyers who have been told they're to tour an unopened amusement park. They're afraid for their own lives (and to some extent, that of others), and you feel that fear, but there's no tangible grief following the loss of human lives at any point in the story. Even the two children seems not at all traumatised by the things they go through, quipping and quarreling again as soon as immediate danger is over, and happily petting dinosaurs even after they've multiple times survived attacks by other animals -- often of the same species. I didn't exactly mind any of this, as lengthy hand-wringing of how sad and horrible this and that was doesn't exactly make for exciting reading -- but it did take a tiny bit of believability away, and it also made it harder to differentiate supposedly hardened characters from the ones less used to danger and hardships.

But this is a minor concern. I spend so much time on it only because it struck me as odd, not because it weakened the story much. Crichton is otherwise excellent at making things feel horrifically real, including the terror the characters experience over and over again, and the ebb and flow of the threats throughout the book works wonderfully. All the thumbs all the way up. Between this and "The Great Train Robbery", I'm two for two on highly satisfying and memorable Crichton novels, and am considering making a point of trying out more. show less

Up front, I will say that the movie probably influenced my reaction to the book, so if you're looking for an unbiased opinion, you may want to go elsewhere. Jurassic Park is one of my top 3 favorite movie franchises, if not the top, even though I can certainly admit that there are some duds in there. I just don't care; I love them anyway. I did read this book once, back in high school, most likely because of how much I already liked the first couple of movies then.

Now reading it again, I think I appreciated it even more than I did back then. Yes, the science gets a little long-winded, as do Malcolm's speeches, so I might have skimmed a little. But that doesn't keep me from enjoying a book. Outside of that, there is a lot of excitement, show more and even though Malcolm won't shut up, I really liked his character. The race against time caused by the juvenile raptors on the boat headed for the mainland adds even higher stakes. And the book doesn't make quite as many huge leaps about dinosaurs that paleontologists couldn't possibly know for sure, but rather the characters have to learn about them and deduce what they can expect as they go.

I have seen the movie too many times to not have been constantly comparing the two as I read, and I even made some notes to help myself keep both the similarities and differences straight (some were things that were used in the 2nd movie, even though there's also a 2nd book). But I do think the book stands on its own and should be read by fans of the movie, which is more famous than the book, but does owe its existence to the book. show less

Whenever a movie is released, I always like to read the book before seeing the film. I made an exception with Jurassic Park because I couldn’t wait to see it when it was first released in 1993. And I’ve seen this movie several times since, but decided to go back and read the book now. Michael Crichton is such a great writer. He’s a pro at setting the stage with all the fine details that build suspense and make the story so exciting. These tiny details are easily overlooked when watching a film as explosively amazing as Jurassic Park. Readers know that in the written version, these small but vital details are there for the reader to take in and savor before being blasted with more cinematography.

When Dr. Alan Grant, a professor of show more paleontology at the University of Denver, and his assistant, Dr. Ellie Sattler, a grad student studying paleobotany, are asked by John Hammond, the wealthy founder of The Hammond Foundation who funds many of their digs, to visit his new mysterious park, they fly to the island of Isla Nublar off the coast of Costa Rica. Not knowing what to expect, nothing could have prepared them for what they found in the small tropical jungle where Hammond had spared no expense to create a wildlife park populated by live dinosaurs. They are accompanied by Dr. Ian Malcolm, a renowned mathematician and devout follower of chaos theory, and Hammond’s two grandchildren, Lex and Tim, and begin a tour of the park. When the power fails, turning off electrified fences that separate the animals, Dr. Grant and the kids come face-to-face with a Tyrannosaurus rex and run for their lives. Barely making it back to the visitor center, they finally think they’re safe, only to find the velociraptors waging a fierce attack against the rest of the survivors.

This explosive story is told through fascinating genetic information about dinosaurs and scientific facts concerning the DNA cloning process used to revive animals that have been extinct for millions of years. Interesting and entertaining, this book, which sparked the Jurassic Movie Franchise, is worth the time invested and offers the motivations behind the characters we have grown to love. show less

An inventive and perfectly-paced thriller. The story is one known to everyone who hasn't been living under a rock, so I won't waste time going over it. Suffice to say that Spielberg and co. kept their film very faithful to the book, no doubt because of its strong world-building and pacey, almost movie-like prose.

It really does tear along, despite oodles of scientific exposition (even when some of the characters talk like encyclopaedias, for some reason it doesn't grate). Author Michael Crichton is excellent at creating a sense of impending doom early in the novel, even better at keeping track of things as the disaster unfolds – he even makes graphs interesting – and intensely gripping when it comes to the action and carnage. He show more makes his dinosaurs come alive: they behave like animals, displaying traits similar to modern birds and reptiles. This really makes his world believable and threatening – a difficult skill (one of the few flaws in the recent franchise reboot Jurassic World was how it seemed the dinosaurs' actions were dictated by the requirements of the plot, rather than the plot seeming to be driven by the dinosaurs' unpredictable behaviour). Crichton is a bit clumsy at times with the anti-science hubris stuff, but it comes across as more of a passionate quirk than a flaw. It doesn't burn any of the reserves of goodwill built up throughout the book, which is an excellent feat of imagination and storytelling. Crichton's footprint on popular culture is larger and more emphatic than that of a tyrannosaur's. show less