Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsSci-Fi Animal-Horror Reveals Truths about Humanity?
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2019
After reading the second Jurassic Park book, it really hit me how Crichton, at least in this series (since I haven't read anything else from him yet), has a wonderful way of making the stories about more than just the individual events happening. There's an overarching theme to the story about how humanity relates to nature and how humanity is part of nature. It sounds trite, but it's hard to describe the way the book handles it. All I can say is that I came out of reading both of the Jurassic books feeling oddly better and less fatalistic about humanity's ultimate impact on the Earth.
His characters are sometimes likable, sometimes not, sometimes survive, sometimes don't, but they're almost always complex in a way you might not expect them to be. It's rarer than people might think to find complex characters in any genre. The people and situations are real and sympathetic enough that I end up feeling equally bad when likable characters and even the most unlikable characters are killed.
I also appreciate how Crichton doesn't really demonize the animals. They may be the primary danger in the books, but they're not evil. They're animals, but there's always a bit of a sense of curiosity and wonder mixed in with the fear. Maybe not as much as the Jurassic Park movie, but it's there. I guess you could say the animals are complex characters, just like the humans are.
