Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton

Eager for a trashy bestseller to read on holiday, I picked up Jurassic Park. A lot of people might disagree, but I found this to be one of the rare instances where a book is much worse than its film adaptation. Crichton is an idea man, but he cannot write well. The concept of a futuristic theme park featuring genetically engineered dinosaurs is a brilliant one, and in the hands of a skilled author it could have been a great novel. Characters are flat, 90's archetypes; the vanilla protagonist, the egomaniac, the quirky academic, the woman. Dialogue is hammy and expositional, action scenes are predictable and strangely devoid of tension. At no point does one care for the safety of his characters, they're simply there for the dinosaurs to torment. Readers have praised the way Crichton works the pseudo-science effortlessly into his work, but I found it clunky and overly preachy.

The plot needs little introduction. Billionaire visionary John Hammond sets up a dino theme park on an island off Costa Rica, inviting a group of various professionals to assess the place before going public. The dinosaurs have been cloned following a breakthrough involving DNA extraction from fossilised insects, which probably got everyone all excited when the book was published in 1991. Inevitably, the park's security systems are sabotaged and the dinosaurs are unleashed to wreak havoc. The Frankenstein elements are all there; man attempting to play God and control nature, and it's been done hundreds of times before. Aside from Crichton's quack science and T-Rex obsession, Jurassic Park's main problem is internal errors. Sometimes dinosaurs change species mid-page, and there were definitely numerous locational inconsistencies. Not that any of these gripes really matter.

It's inoffensive, easy reading pulp and I got exactly what I expected. I would probably have loved it as a teenager.

Rating: 2/5