Parc Juràssic (1990)

I first read this over twenty years ago and decided I should try it again now that I'm an adult. My memory definitely missed out on parts, I loved exploring the park with the characters and their excitement and wonder as people who didn't grow up quite so aware of dinosaurs as I did. There were definitely parts I felt like the dinosaurs weren't quite as scary as they could have been, that the reactions of the characters didn't properly portray the fear they likely would have felt in situations like that. But all in all I enjoyed it. ( )

Enjoyable. It’s been forever since I’ve read this so I didn’t remember anything other than Malcolm’s “the earth will survive” speech (which was apparently impactful to a teen that had grown up hearing about the hole in the ozone, deforestation of the rainforests, and endless refrains of “save the planet”), and boy is this different from the movie (which I still enjoy to this day).

The book is a bit more thought-provoking (at least until the dinosaurs start eating people) in regards to the morality of cloning and treatment and “real-ness” of the resulting animal, which I liked. And it was neat seeing the bits and pieces that have popped up in the movie franchise over the years. But there were things in the book that thankfully didn’t make the movie (rocket-launchers anyone?) which was a good decision. Also, the end made no sense to me and was worthless plot-wise aside from giving the ability to leave the story a little cliff-hanger-y.

While I feel no desire to continue to revisit my Crichton reads from the early 90s, I did enjoy this one. And I don’t even think nostalgia played a part in that. ( )

En esta espectacular novela, los dinosaurios vuelven a conquistar la Tierra. En una isla remota, un grupo de hombres y mujeres emprende una carrera contra el tiempo para evitar un desastre mundial provocado por la desmedida ambición de comercializar la ingeniería genética. ( )

A privately-funded genetics company engineers a state-of-the-art technique for extracting dinosaur DNA from the blood meals of ancient mosquitoes bound in amber, and then builds an entire theme park around the newly-cloned prehistoric beasts. What could go wrong?

I selected this book to fulfill the Read Harder category for "a book whose movie or TV adaptation you've seen (but haven't read the book)." Since I was already familiar with the plot I thought it would be more or less easy reading. While it does read rather like an exciting, summer blockbuster film, I was mistaken in thinking that the suspense and terror within wouldn't actually be somewhat stressful! It was an overall fun and thrilling read, and I was satisfied by how much of the detail was faithfully incorporated into the film (at least, what I remember of it nearly thirty years later). I have two complaints, both about unjustly-written characters: Lex, a young child, was depicted as so over-the-top annoying that it could only have been to serve as a plot device. Likewise, Nedry the computer guru, is described only ever in fat-shaming terms and it is presumably no coincidence that he's the saboteur. ( )

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 (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. ( )