“It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since the extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end—the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, and the island indefinitely closed to the public.
There are rumors that something has survived. . .”
Title: The Lost World
Series: Jurassic Park #2
Author: Michael Crichton
Page Count: 393
Genre: Science Fiction / Thriller
Rating: 4/5.0
Date Read: March 11th, 2024
| As I slowly work through both my backlogs of open series as well as my Michael Crichton collection, it only made sense to get around to reading The Lost World to follow up my reading of Jurassic Park a year or two ago. Even though I know that I have seen the films in the past I really don’t recall a lot about this one. I will admit that reading this did give me the itch to load up the film and give it another watch soon. If for no other reason, to perhaps see some of the changes from book to film. I definitely have a feeling there were some fairly major changes. I looked through the cast and it seems like they may have even left out a couple of the major characters from the book or perhaps just repurposed their part of the story into others, I’m not sure. The pacing of The Lost World was a bit on the faster side but not too much. I will say that even though I own a physical copy of this book I opted for the Audiobook narrated by Scott Brick, who in my opinion, did a very good job in bringing this story to life. I think for a reading coming into this book having only read the first book (Jurassic Park) and no exposure to the first two films, this would be an even more enjoyable experience. I only say that going back to my previous statement that there were times that when a character or event was mentioned I found myself getting sidetracked at times trying to recall how or if that was handled in the film. Other than that, I felt this kept with what I come to expect from my other previously read books by Crichton. The world building was really good. I love the Jurassic Park stories where we get to see prehistorical animals living in a modern world one way or another. This one provides a new location compared to the first book which is still in a bit of a fallout from that storyline. Site two provides more interesting observations. There is also a solid antagonist in this one along with some fairly obnoxious characters on the protagonist side of things. It gives us some nice inclusion of factions in a story like this. Crichton once again provides us a good amount of details in his descriptions of environments and events to let us feel like we are there but not simply information dumping trying to bury us. The character development was good in this one. I can’t really think of a lot of true character arcs in book two alone. It seems more of a continuation and just how some past characters and this world interact. What I mean is we do have several characters in The Lost World that weren’t in book one and we get to know them but not a lot of overall growth of these characters. This seems far more a story driven read than character driven in that respect. That’s just my opinion. Sure we see some characters do some questionable things and perhaps see some subtle changes in how some characters see the world around them by the end still. Overall all I’d say if you enjoyed Jurassic Park, then it only makes sense to read The Lost World as well. I do think that if you haven’t seen the films, you might actually enjoy this one slightly more. This one still feels very much like a typical Crichton read so of course I enjoyed it. World Building 4.5/5 Pacing 3.75/5 Character Development 4/5 |
No Comment! Be the first one.