I had been boycotting Michael Crichton since his unhelpful muddying of the waters of the climate change "debate" in his next-to-last novel which included a personal message to his readers that he didn't believe the issues were really human related at all. Read the IPCC report, you ignoramus. However, I was stuck in an airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, having finished every novel in my bag and with the prospect of 12 hours of airplanes and airports ahead. The novel selection in the airport shop was a single shelf of chick lit and Clive Cusslers. I was desperate. His newest hobbyhorse is genetics and the story, if you could call it that, is light window dressing for sociopolitical railery. He should have stuck to dinosaurs, not that the pseudoscientific scaffolding that Jurassic Park hung upon was any better, but at least we weren't subjected to his personal views to such an enfuriating degree. I don't disagree that genetics, gene therapy, and copywriting of particular genes are bringing up some worrying issues but I don't need them pointed out to me by some hack writer in the guise of a novel. Mr. Crichton is a conspiracy theorist and the conspiracy is made up of SCIENTISTS. Don't even get me started on his Astrobiology book.

This was not my favorite Crichton book, unfortunately. I have found with Crichton, when he relies too much on deep explanations of either the science or politics behind whatever the main topic is in the book, I tend to lose interest. In this book's case, it was not only waaaaay too political but it had an extremely large amount of characters, and many of them really had no bearing on the story other than to introduce an example of a gene law or something of that nature. It was very hard to keep track of the characters and organizations that they worked for.

I understand why he went so in depth about the gene laws that were in place at the time, but it felt tedious at times. I completely agree with Crichton on this, since it seems the main point of the book was to show how absurd it is to patent a gene. I also think it kind of goes hand in hand with what Ian Malcolm so famously said about scientists never stopping to think if they SHOULD do a thing.

Really, this wasn't his best and it wasn't his worst. It's an interesting subject, and biotechnology is always fascinating to me. Everything did come together by the end, which is what I was hoping for. It unfortunately takes 300 pages to really get moving though. An interesting read, but not his best work.

DID NOT FINISH
I got about two fifths of the way through this book and decided to put it down.
~
There were a few things I didn't like about this book:

1) Too much sexual content. I mean, I suppose he's playing in suit in a novel about genetics, but still. It was a little gratuitous.

2) No characters you can root for. Literally. No. Moral. Characters. At all. Which, I guess is kind of part of the point of this book. But man, you just can't do that. It is good to have characters with deep flaws in your story, but to have most of the characters in your story have no redeeming qualities, and the rest have no morals... That's no good.

3) No coherent plot. Yes, there were stakes. Yes, there were bad things happening to characters I was mildly interested in. Yes, there was intrigue. But it was all over the place as far as plot and continuity.
I wouldn't have minded this aspect so much if it wasn't for my previous two complaints. Especially the second. I usually enjoy a story that I have to put together myself. But I'm not going to be motivated to do that if I'm not following a character I like.
~
The one redeeming quality of this book was all the real newspaper clippings and newscast/interview transcripts. He starts the book by saying: "This book is a work of fiction, except for the parts that are not." So that was interesting. Not interesting enough for me to keep reading, but still kind of cool.
~
Maybe it's just because I grew up after people generally got over their fear of genetic engineering, but it kind of feels like Crichton is beating a dead horse here. I read n  Jurassic Parkn for the dinosaurs, not for the "genetic engineering evil" mantra. While I appreciated the themes of Jurassic Park, I don't want to read a whole book just about the evils of genetic engineering.
~
n  I Learnedn:
Including moral characters in storytelling is vital.

I'm giving the five stars not because of how it is written, but what it's about. Crichton was trained as a medical doctor before he was a novelist. And he died of cancer recently at a relatively young age. I am supposing he wrote this book after he was diagnosed. He knew there could be all kinds of ways of treating his disease that have not yet emerged from clinical trials. He was certainly angry at the medical establishment, at the research community, at Big Pharma, and at the government's policies regarding intellectual property rights for genetic discoveries. Crichton's books often have bibliographies, but this one also has an appendix containing his recommendations on legislative reform in the area of genetic research.

As to the book as literature, he interweaves multiple plots that converge here and there. It's a compelling drama of ideas, but it lacks the strong narrative thread. It won't make a good movie without sacrificing a lot of the interesting side issues. There's no single strong main character, no single ominous threat with ticking fuse. Oddly enough, my complaint about some of his more commercially successful books is that the plotting was too simplistic, too lean, as though designed for the movie script to simply fall out. I assumed he listened to CAA too much about how to structure his books because his agents cared not at all about them as literature, only about how much they would fetch for movie rights.

The best Crichton book, by far, is "The Great Train Robbery." Not sci-fi at all, just meticulous research, loads of detail, and great storytelling.

Una carta de quinientas páginas llena de conspiraciones y cadenas de Fb sobre lo que sucede en el mundo de la biotecnología, algunas que actualmente sabes que son posibles y otras que falta agregar un "creeme, wey"

Fascinating book that is highly scientific.

A bit confusing at times but still a good book.

What happens when a genetic engineering company, InGen, mucks about with DNA?

No, wait. That was Jurassic Park.

What happens when a genetic engineering company, Bio-Gen, mucks about with DNA?

OK, well the plots aren't really that similar at all. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but compare the two story lines because my only experience with Michael Crichton up to this point was the Jurassic Park movie. So, I approached this book with a bias.

I'm impressed with the author's ability to maintain multiple parallel story lines and characters throughout the book, and somehow, seamlessly, bring them all together at the end. I was, in fact, surprised at the end. I love that in a story.

Although certainly entertaining, it did come off a bit silly at times. I'm one of those personalities that can get all scared from the mildest of books. But, I found myself scoffing at points in the story when I KNEW I was supposed to be disturbed. Hard core suspense/thriller readers won't be impressed. But, scaredy-cats such as myself will undoubtedly enjoy it.

4.5

This structure of this book reminded me of the movie True Stories in that the main story breaks apart and follows different characters. Some of the stories overlap while some stand on their own.
There was one particular part that involved a kidnapping and it really kept me on edge. There were other parts (and ways that Crichton described certain things) that were hilarious. Mostly though, this one kept me interested in what each of the characters were going through.

Really enjoyed this one!

I love the way that Michael Crichton takes seemingly non-related parallel story lines and brings them all together in the end. Being a scientist, the topic of this book was interesting to me and I liked the book. I could really do without the profanity in the book... the F-word being his word of choice. I must say that Crichton sure did exhaust it's usage... as verb, noun, adjective, and maybe even some new ways to use it. I had to laugh when on page 370, one of the characters, "shouted and swore." Any other place in the book, he just put it right out there. Even when the character was not directly talking or thinking, Crichton would use profanity as an adjective when describing what was going on. It took a 4-star book down to a 3-star for me.

With all the different scenarios and characters in this work, it definitely became a page turner for me. One day only from start to finish and by the end, I admit I was exhausted. Not just a story about the gene and discovering how it can be manipulated to improve our lives but the misuse in the wrong hands. I remember a saying that is stuck in my head "just because we can, doesn't mean we should" and it certainly applies to the scientists in this story. I thought it was well researched and incredibly well written. Highly recommend this book.

E achar que o Michael Crichton apenas escrevia sobre o Parque Jurássico...
Fiquei fã

This is a word salad of half baked good ideas but I kind of enjoyed it. Think he probably could have crammed in five or six more subplots if he'd really tried though.