On a remote jungle island, genetic engineers have created a dinosaur game park.
An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now one of mankind's most thrilling fantasies has come true and the first dinosaurs that the Earth has seen in the time of man emerge.
But, as always, there is a dark side to the fantasy and after a catastrophe destroys the park's defense systems, the scientists and tourists are left fighting for survival...
My Thoughts: Where do I start?!? This is the book that one of my all time favourite movies was adapted from, and so I had high expectations from the very beginning.
The very first thing that struck me was how unlikeable most of the characters are - Hammond is the most naive and frustrating character I have stumbled across in a long time. I know that he is supposed to be the shady character in the book, but to me he just seemed to be full of forced idiocy - which doesn't seem plausible for the man behind such a massive development.
The next character that I found nauseating was Lex - and I'm not surprised that she was completely transformed in light of the movie. I don't think we are told how old she is (correct me if I'm wrong) and I can not even begin to guess at her age. She appears to be a bit of a tomboy, loving baseball and such, but all the way through the book she whines, can't walk for herself, touches things she shouldn't, gets in the way, can't keep quiet. She really grated on me.
Don't get me started on Malcolm, at least 80 percent of his dialogue could have been chopped out and I would have been happy.
I didn't find myself attached to any of the characters at all, and I will let Crichton off a little on this one, because the book is very much plot-driven. Having said this, some of the detail in the novel was just completely unbelievable (and hey, I know the whole thing is supposed to be far-fetched, but I like to have some kind of explanation as to why certain things might happen).
It seems that 'anything goes' is the key to this read and that doesn't quite sit well with me, I'm so glad that it was reigned in a little for the film.
The fact that this novel was also supposed to be set on a beautiful island - masses of stunning landscape sliced through with man-made concrete buildings and wire fences escaped me a little. Crichton could definitely have elaborated on this a touch more; could have placed me right in the middle of the scenery. His descriptions of the island (in my own opinion) fell flat.
The reason I'm not marking this off as a complete failure is because the basic ideas behind the book are stunning, and it produced such an iconic movie that I watched over and over as a kid. That in itself is one hell of an acheivement.
So, well done Crichton for conjuring this one up. I won't be reading anything else by him, but I will always have a bit of a soft spot for Jurassic Park. :)
Theme: 10/10
Plot: 5/10
Characters: 1/10
Setting: 4/10
Style: 4/10
OVERALL AVERAGE: 5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment