I just bought his new book. Anyone else read it? I am curious your thoughts (no spoilers please). BTW I LOVE his older work. Jurassic Park is my tome.
No I haven't read his latest book (Next?). I have mixed feelings about Crichton as a writer. The good : His books are fast paced and action-filled. His books have the feel of a movie. He usually does his homework when it comes to science. The bad : His characters are utterly two-dimensional. It's almost like he rushes through a perfunctory intro of his characters so he can get on with telling the story without interruptions. His books *feel* like they were written for movie-makers to snap them up and pay him lots of money. He takes many liberties with science. While he does his homework in finding good scientific topics to work with, he often distorts the facts in fantastic ways. Timeline was a perfect example, while Jurassic Park and TLW were at least somewhat believable, TL just lost it in terms of believability.
I wasn't aware he had a new book out. He is one of my favorite authors, I love Jurassic Park, Timeline, Sphere, the Andromeda Strain. Sure his books stretch things but he does so much research he makes it sound possible. Not probable but possible, even Timeline. One thing I have felt is that although his books seem perfect for block-buster thriller action movies, no movie director has been able to capture the energy of his books and make them into good movies. Jurassic Park/The Lost World being the exception, all of his movies could have been MUCH better. Timeline was a great book but the movie was a joke.
The new book seems more like a series of provocative anecdotes about genetic engineering, stitched together into a story that barely holds its own weight. It was intriguing only because I don't spend alot of time thinking about these issues. Just finished Flyboys, about eight WWII fighter pilots who crash on ChiChi Jima, adjacent to Iwo Jima, in the final push against Japan. The book tells the story of japanese military training, and the ascendancy of the airplane as the fighting device in that war. It is also a ghastly description of the treatment of prisoners, and the waging of war against civilian population centers. Highly recommended and hugely readable, with many parallels to our military issues today.
