| $@%&! level: Medium-High “Bedroom” level: None Violence level: High Back Cover: “An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now mankind's most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price. Until something goes wrong...” |
So here's the thing. Fascinating and wonderful as it is, the first half or two-thirds of the book is just building up to the real excitement. And even if you haven't seen the movie, you can tell from the beginning that just about everything is going to go as wrong as it possibly can. I mean, Ian Malcolm might as well have been called Cassandra. Actually, given how he expected things to go, I'm surprised he let them get him anywhere near that island. I guess there's some satisfaction in being proved right, even if you do get gnawed on by a T-rex in the process. But my point here is that he spends an awfully long time with the predicting before things actually start to happen. I think part of that is that the author secretly just wants to show off the park just as much as Hammond does. So he shows and explains and foreshadows and sets things up, and it's all very scientific and interesting. But it does push the exciting parts of the story back a good deal, so that they felt almost hurried.
And I have to admit that the climax feels a bit rushed as well. Or perhaps just slightly anti-climactic. I mean, I realize that it was a brutally dangerous situation, and a lot of people died trying to get everyone to safety, but the most climactic moments of the book take place on a computer, complete with diagrams of the computer display. (Incidentally, I find Lex a little disappointing as a character. She doesn't do anything throughout the whole book except freak out and cause trouble.) When I'm reading the climax, the last thing I want to do is study a computer diagram, even if that is what the character is doing! I mostly skipped over them. I have to say, he did a good job with what he had, but it's pretty difficult to make someone trying to figure out a new computer program into a thrilling tale. But that has to be the climax, because once they get the power back on, everything sort of settles down. (Also incidentally, I think the bit with the compys at the end was cheating. People shouldn't die after the climax like that.)
Ultimately, although the book is fascinating and generally enjoyable to read, I think this story was meant to be a movie. The visuals and background music make it absolutely awe inspiring. The written version feels more like a scientific exercise with a bunch of death and violence thrown in.