Congo

His books always entertain tho...

Michael Crichton can certainly write a thriller. This time he’s focused on the Congo—one of the great “untamed” wildernesses left on the planet as we follow a corporate team’s attempt to find a legendary city and its blue diamond mines. The only things standing against them is the jungle itself, a civil war, cannibal natives, and a team from another corporation trying to beat them to the site. And, of course, whatever killed off their last team just as they were achieving success. It’s a thrilling journey made much more so by the inclusion of a naïve academic and his sign-language-capable gorilla, Amy. (Frankly, including the gorilla only barely (if you really flex your suspension of disbelief) made sense, but it’s so critical to the end of the story that you just have to forgive Crichton for this.)

Crichton uses an interesting narrative technique to add further tension to the story—that is, the whole novel is presented as an after the fact “report”. (I put that word in quotes because the novel reads like an exciting novel, not like a boring report.) This permits Crichton to inform the reader that the whole expedition is a disaster and to make little observations along the way that show where bad decisions and misconceptions led to the disaster. It’s a remarkable use of third person omniscient narration that keeps subtly increasing the threat.

All in all, this is another great story from Michael Crichton.

They’d better call the book Amy, after the most sensible character in the book even if she is a gorilla.
The story is about a supertech company hunting for diamonds this time deep in the jungle of Congo/Zaire on the continent of Africa. The first expedition failed to survive so a 2nd attempt follows this time with dome unlikely extra passengers a gorilla that does signing to communicate with her human trainers.
The expedition runs into expected trouble in a long lost city but even they were never prepared for the guardians of this city with its source of diamonds.
The story about the gorilla and communication was excellent the greed of humans was somehow to be expected.
I did enjoy the classic tales of Quartermain about mysterious dark Africa and MC did a lovely update.

Whoever wrote the moviescript failed the Crichton novel terribly which is exciting and interesting, something that cannot be said about the movie.

This was a great book,
but don't read under this or it will ruin the story for you.


This book takes place in many continents starting in the USA. First with an American team of ERTS who search for important geological parts of the earth for which they can extract important minerals or deposits. They have anonymous companies hire them to retrieve these resources that they need in neutral and allied countries. In this book Congo they are searching for type 11b Diamonds with a boron coating on them. This is important for making data transfer and computers run 100,000 times faster and hold just as much or more data then they had before. So this would put them 3 years ahead of other companies in those fields since all business's are competing, and you could make millions with a 3 week advance, then think about what you could do with a 3 year advance in technology that's well over billions of dollars. Well anyways, this ERTS sends a group of people to retrieve and find the diamonds in the Congo jungle in Africa. This team is doing well until they reach the mountain where the ruins of Zinj. The city that lost tales of Diamonds came from. So they've found what they are looking for. Then there camp is attacked by "Gorillas" who smash there heads with stones. Why stones? I'll explain later. Well the first team fails, so ERTS sends in another team. They get in contact with a Scientist named Elliot who has been training this Mountain Gorilla Amy sign language from a very young age. Smart Gorilla. Well this gorilla was brought back from Africa from an American tourist woman, since Amy's mom was killed by a crushed skull (the gorillas at Zinj did it). So they are all together the ERTS group, Elliot, Amy, and the Woman who entered MIT at 13. They all go to Tangeria if i remember right to pick up the person who's going to lead them safely through the Congo. They go through some hardships, espionage from opposing companies trying for this multi million dollar deal. Amy gets stolen, Civil war in Africa, Cannibalism in the Congo, midget tribes finding white men in jungle, automated machine guns shooting at attacking Gorillas, then Amy blowing up the Diamond mine and triggering the explosion of the Mountain to erupt on the Richter 9 scale. They get attacked by Cannibalistic tribes as they try to flee the erupting mountain. Then escape in a hot air balloon being fueled by many propane tanks from a plane crash meant to deliver supplies to the opposing country's searching for Diamonds.

I read this as a teenager. I don't remember the story. I do remember telling my parents the book was really good and giving it to them to read. I remember taking off later to go babysitting. When I got home late at night I was greeted with my dad saying, "She finished the book!" and my mom laughing.

Great memories.

Reading this book again I'm reminded why my mother read it so fast and I can't remember the story. There's a lot of skimmable content. And the footnotes! It's been so long since I've read something with so many footnotes. I remember footnotes being a thing way back when.

Other than the overload of information, I had a good time reading this. It's always interesting to see how much writing has changed in the last 40 years. Now let's see what else I can dig up!

I think overall this just isn’t the type of book i typically like to read. It was written to literally and very in depth. Overly descriptive. For this type of plot line i think i would have had a better time watching this as a tv series.

This was indeed an incredibly enjoyable reread after twenty-one years, and still stands the same rating I had given it back then. Lots of facts embedded within the book from various topics such as different types of technologies (some are obsolete now), the Congolese civil war, the Pygmies, the cannibalistic tribes, volcanic eruptions, rainforests, etc. Some good quotes as well. This book never bored me. I do not know how exactly I had felt the first time I had read it, but it was certainly more interesting to read now after having read Alan Moorehead's The White Nile. :)

ČITATELJSKI IZAZOV - NASLOVI PREMA SLOVIMA MOGA IMENA (18 - Ć)
S obzirom da nisam pronašla knjigu čiji naslov počinje sa slovom Ć, odabrala sam najbližu mogućnost, naslov sa slovom C.

Ja ne znam je li problem u meni ili u Crichtonu, ali majko mila, meni njegovo pisanje uopće više ne sjeda. Je li se sad potrefilo da sam uzela dvije loše knjige za redom ili je njegovo pisanje uvijek bilo isto, a ja sam s godinama promijenila ukus. Congo mi je ajme loša knjiga.
Radnja prati dvoje znanstvenika, Karen Ross i Petera Elliota, gorilu Amy i plaćenika Munroa, koji zajedno kreću na putovanje kroz kongoansku prašumu u potrazi za ruševinama izgubljenog grada Zinja. Svatko ima neke svoje razloge... Elliot traži mjesta koja je Amy naslikala da bi otkrio zašto ima noćne more, Ross traži dijamante, a usput se pokušava iskazati u svom poslu, a Munro samo želi biti dobro plaćen. Na putu do svog odredišta i na samom odredištu doživljavaju različite napete i opasne situacije, napadaju ih različite militantne skupine, nilski konji, susreću ljudoždere, pronalaze novu vrstu neprijateljski nastrojenih gorila i aktivni vulkan.... Uglavnom, kao što je bio slučaj i s njegovom knjigom Piratske širine, tekst na poleđini knjige (točnije ovaj put sažetak ovdje na GR) opet zavarava.
Očekivala sam napeticu s puno akcije i zanimljivih preokreta, a dobila sam... paaa zapravo ne znam što je to on napisao. Prva polovina knjige bila mi je predosadna. Da knjigu nisam odabrala za čitateljski izazov, mislim da bih odustala od čitanja. Ima jako malo prave radnje. U početku nas doduše upoznaje s likovima i prvo poglavlje nas dosta bombastično uvodi u radnju pa čovjek pomisli: uuu ovo će biti odlično. Međutim onda počinje s tehnikalijama. Kao da je knjigu napisao za nekog informatičkog stručnjaka. Stranice i stranice objašnjavanja kako taj neki određeni informatički sustav funkcionira, kratice i stručne riječi. A samo par fusnota s objašnjenjima. Često je nabrajao godine, novčane iznose, različite druge brojke, vrijeme, što me je isto zamaralo. Tek negdje na pola knjige počinje prava, napeta, zanimljiva radnja. (I samo zbog toga 2 zvjezdice. Da je nastavila u istom tonu, bila bi samo jedna.)
Još me jedna stvar jako smetala. Recimo, upoznajemo gorilu Amy. Crichton malo piše o njoj i onda se prebaci na 10 stranica istraživanja o gorilama i znakovnom jeziku. Ili 15 stranica piše o razvoju računalnih čipova, ili 3-4 stranice o razvoju šatora. Kad u džungli sreću kanibale, onda ubaci 10 stranica o susretima istraživača s kanibalima. Sve on to lijepo istraži, navodi iz čijih knjiga je to pročitao, čak na kraju knjige ima popis svih djela na kojima je bazirao ono što je napisao. Ali čemu? Čovječe, pišeš li roman ili stručni članak??? Sve te stručne digresije su me umarale i, iako bi mi same za sebe bile zanimljive, ovdje su samo doprinijele tome da uspore radnju, ubiju napetost i u meni prouzroče želju da se ostavim čitanja.
Što se tiče likova, opet imam problem sa ženskim likom. Jedinim ženskim likom. Ovaj put nije kao u Piratskim širinama, gdje su skoro svi ženski likovi bili prikazani glupi i nepotrebni. Karen Ross je jako inteligentna, ali umišljena, bezosjećajna i uopće ju nije razvijao preko tih osobina. Ona se do kraja knjige ne mijenja, nije ništa naučila iz mnogih pogreški koje je činila. Svjesna sam da se nakon samo dvije pročitane knjige ne može dobro prosuditi (prije 15-20 godina pročitala sam još pet njegovih knjiga, ali likova iz njih se ne sjećam), ali nekako me taj način kako osmišljava ženske likove smeta. Muške likove je lijepo osmislio, Munro mi je odličan, višedimenzionalan lik koji se mijenja, uči, ima različite slojeve osobnosti koje pokazuje tijekom knjige. Gorila Amy mi je također odlična. Ali zaboga, osobnost joj je više razvijena nego kod Karen.
Što se tiče stila pisanja, i s njim sam imala problem. Osim gore navedenih razloga, još mi je jedna stvar zasmetala. Često je dijaloge zamijenio nespretan opis razgovora. Primjerice: Munro osluškuje i sa strahom upozorava: „Trebamo pobjeći. Vulkan će eruptirati.“ I onda ide sljedeća rečenice: Karen Ross mu je odgovorila da vulkan neće još eruptirati. Bilo je puno takvih krnjih dijaloga. Knjigu sam čitala u originalu, na engleskom, znači nije kriv prevoditelj.
Eto, opet više negativnih elemenata, nego pozitivnih. Stvarno moram probati ponovo pročitati neku od njegovih knjiga koje sam čitala ranije da vidim što mi se tad toliko svidjelo. Nadam se da se neću razočarati.