3.25-3.5 for me.

This made me want to read more sci fi but also I already was feeling that type of way.

Send me the sci fi recs.

I just want to love a book

Nothing a good strong vacuum cleaner wouldn't fix.

Michael Crichton is not everyone's cup of tea. Hell, TEA isn't everyone's cup of tea. This book was my Darjeeling (not my favourite tea, but okay).

So a bunch of evil-doing, greedy corporate bastards get their scientists to invent a swarm of naughty nanobots that are individually dumb-arses but collectively a bit smarter. These swarms of nanobots fly around the desert performing their evil-doings and occasionally imitating us humans.

Look! Normally Crichton's stories are based on believable science. You don't have to stretch your imagination too much to believe we could bring back dinosaurs...but this...this is just utter fantasy. Having said that, Crichton also had a way of building tension. You just knew something bad was going on. Something was sneaking up on the characters just like Mr Crocodile used to sneak up on Punch and Judy. In the end, it was eminently readable and in typical 70s, 80s fashion, The bad guys, and just about everything else, gets blown to shit. Still...not a bad ending.

Michael Crichton is a science fiction writer. There I said it. His publishers have been trying to hide it. No one will admit it. But it's true. Sci Fi is about the only thing he does write. The next time someone tells you they don't like science fiction, ask them if they like Crichton. They'll say yes and then ask them to tell you the plot of their favorite book from him and then say, how is that not science fiction. Stammering and evasion will ensure. My premise is that everyone will like speculative fiction if it's done right - and Crichton always did it right.

I remember I first learned that Jurassic Park was actually a book - that was sometime last year. Well, I read it this year, and Jurassic Park turned out to be one of the best books I've ever read. And then I saw Prey by Michael Crichton (the genius behind Jurassic Park) and figured "There's no way this is as good as Jurassic Park." After reading it, though, I found out that Prey is another home run by Michael Crichton, a spectacular book comparable to Jurassic Park, and probably a top three book I've ever read (not counting The Series of Unfortunate Events, of course).

Prey is a first-person story about Jack Foreman, a former employee at MediaTronics (sorry if I mess up the plotline; I finished the book in January). Jack, unfortunately, got fired from MediaTronics; and now, Jack is a stay-at-home dad. Jack's wife, Julia, works at Xymos, a rival corporation, and Jack believes that Julia is having an affair with Ricky, who owns Xymos. Eventually, Julia shows Jack a new creation at Xymos: a cloud of nanocameras that works as one big camera that Julia says are meant for medical purposes. Soon thereafter, Ricky invites Jack to the Xymos laboratory in Nevada to help fix a problem. The problem is, one of the camera swarms got loose. And it is learning and adapting - and soon enough, it starts killing off the Xymos scientists. Throughout the adventure in Nevada, Jack learns the truth about the nanocameras, the truth about Ricky and Julia, and Jack even gets to meet some of his former employees.

Prey starts off slow, setting everything up; but once it gets going, it doesn't stop. Prey is an extremely exciting and adrenaline-packed book. It has a lot: suspected affairs, killer nanobots, explosions, and the like. and it is all extremely fun to read. The book is also written in Michael Crichton's informal style, and that makes Prey that much more exciting and fun to read. The book does a spectacular job making you actually develop feelings toward the characters, and I found myself rooting for Jack in the final scene against the bad guys. Also, I found myself feeling dislike for Julia and Ricky throughout the book. And, being Michael Crichton, you get to learn stuff, and you get to have fun doing it.

So all in all, Prey is a spectacular book. It is not as good as Jurassic Park, but Prey sure comes close. The energy, pacing, and action of Prey, as well as the sheer entertainment value, make Prey one of my favorite books of all time.

If someone recommended to me a book about shape-shifting creatures who feed on human flesh to spawn and have a central mothership nest in the middle of a desert, I think I would have never, ever picked up that book and recommended Twilight to that person in return, out of sheer spite. Yes, and I think I would have picked Twilight over this kind of book in a heartbeat.

Well, what do ya know, those would have been the most horrible mistakes that I could have ever committed in my life. Well, never judge a book by it's cover, or blurb, seriously.

If you have noticed, most of my books in my shelves consist mainly of the romance and young adult genre. I'm sure some people out there have labelled me as sappy and shallow by now. But wait! I'll prove you wrong. I've finally read a Michael Crichton book. Ha! I AM WELL-READ, DEEPLY INTELLECTUAL AND SCIENTIFICALLY KNOWLEDGABLE! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA....!

Yeah, I'm exaggerating here, and having finished a Michael Crichton book from first page to last should not be the (only) benchmark to judge whether people are just shallow-minded or not. But reading a Michael Crichton book is anything but easy. It's mind-boggling. It's like reading an entire Encyclopedia and learning how to see the interdisciplinarity between the many scientific fields out there. Wow. From computer programming to distributive intelligence to emergent behavior to parasitism and symbiosis to microbiology. A-freaking-mazing. Crichton seems to have an inspirations-overload and regurgitated his entire bachelor and postgraduate Science degrees (Ok, I don't really know the educational background of Crichton, but if he didn't graduate from Science in reality, you definitely would have a hard time convincing me otherwise.) in one entire book without making the storyline seem haphazard. The plot actually makes a lot of sense. I would love to have Crichton as my Science teacher.

Hailed as a typical Michael Crichton classic, Prey is a book about a group of white-collar scientists and engineers embarking on an ambitious project only to have things turn awry and ultimately out of their control when they come to realize their so-called project seems to have a mind of its own and turns against the researchers. The brilliance of the book lies in the usage of scientific facts to corroborate the plot so that readers will be convinced of the plot's reality. It's like a forboding prelude to the scientific problems mankind will face in the near future. I bet Crichton's first book ever as a kid in the sixties or seventies (I'm just guessing and am probably wrong; I don't even know his age) is about environmental pollution and climate change. Crichton's book has an unnerving portent for technology-caused calamities which I can only prey - oops! I meant pray will not come true.

I'm so proud of myself; I can now spout big words like microbrewery, self-organization, lithotrophic base and assembler design (Ok, with a very ambiguous understanding about what each of the words mean)! This book is not for lazyheads. Merely to comprehend the basic idea of how the predators (not the dinosaurs from Jurrasic Park, but the predators in Prey - Ok, that sounds really weird - and sorry, I cannot be more specific about what the predators are or I'll be giving the most shocking part of the book away; think bees crossed with zombies - Ok, that must have seemed even weirder) came into existence requires readers' full attention to the scientific facts weaved throughout the story. I know most of the reviews for this book on Goodreads are quite negative, but as a student who hasn't gone to college yet, my advantage is that I don't have to suspend any disbeliefs (I don't have any to suspend, sadly) to find the book a believable read. This book makes me want to embark on a science-related career to see firsthand the miracles of science and the coolest technologies that can be invented; yet the book makes me hesitant to study science in fear of having the pleasure of reading sci-fi books lost to me forever. Ironic.

Prey is not merely for nerds. There are plenty of action and suspense throughout the book for everyone and anyone (Ok, maybe just anyone who loves action and science) to enjoy. This book is not for the faint-hearted!

Before I end this review, I would like to leave readers with a few words of caution: beware of human-eating shape-shifting pee-in-your-pants-inducing predators! According to Crichton, yes, the existence of such creatures seems frighteningly possible and vivid in the near future with the advancement of science. No, I am not talking about the vampires from Twilight, *wink wink. Unless Crichton starts a new book about how vampires can actually exist from the viewpoint of science, I will never believe in the existence of Twilight vampires. God, I would LURRRRVE to see Crichton try.

"We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so."

Michael Crichton has become one of my favorite authors after I read Jurassic Park, and I have been meaning to read more of his books ever since. For the longest time, I always eyed Prey as being the one I would read next, and it finally happened. I finally read it.

What an intense ride it was.

Seriously, Prey proved itself to be quite the thriller. I thought it was going to go one way, which proved me wrong as it went in a completely different direction. The last act really kept me on the edge of my seat!

Overall Rating: 4.5 stars

This sci-fi novel had frightened the hell out of me when I had read it back in school days.

Amazing book!

Ehh, it was alright. The concept was interesting but the characters were quite bland for my taste. The little kid who kept saying "It's not fair" was quite annoying. The ending I liked and the author explained just about everything that was going on and how it all went down.

Overall the subject of the book was interesting and raises some questions about nanotechnology but the book itself was about average.

It was always going to be asking too much to go 3 for 3 (5 star ratings for both Jurassic Park and Timeline). This was still a fairly entertaining book. I think the science was there, for some reason Crichton fails to add in the element of horror or fear. This results in a big 'So, what?' factor.

Still a good book, but read Timeline or Jurassic Park first

Timeline
Jurassic Park

In the vast, hot, sparse dry deserts of Nevada a miracle occurs...but not for the good. Back in Silicon Valley , in California, everything seems the same, cutthroat as usual, business is business, the weak fall, and the vicious prevail until another stronger one arrives...Jack Forman is unemployed, he lost his job six months ago, finding corruption can have hazardous consequences , companies are not happy with whistle blowers . A longtime inactive in this competitive place, is a disaster, a man with three children and an ambitious wife Julia, she has a job, is desperate . Jack becomes a househusband, not planned, but someone had to take care of the little kids, they are not angels, his wife much too busy at work. Technology is king in this prosperous valley, all is possible, dangerous experiments...are acceptable for going forward , making big money the goal. Which brings the narrative back to Nevada, a major problem is needed to be solved and Jack is the only person with the knowledge to do it. Oddly rehired by his old company, .Media Tronics, and sent to a secret site across the state border as a consultant for his wife's firm, Xymos , with a hush-hush Pentagon contract. A surprisingly development for the computer programmer... swirling, whirling tiny transparent tornadoes, like dust devils, he views outside the lonely plant, full of deadly bacteria and particles, they are alive, bold, brutal, and reproducing... Constantly changing shapes, beautiful colors, expanding and contracting, fading in high winds, but always reassembling in the burning heat in the daylights calm sun, still people start to die. Growing stronger daily, more intelligent and eerily forming solid images of humans, copies of the workers here. Especially Ricky, in charge of the Silver State's complex, and Jack's friend, however, it becomes apparent he is hiding something important . Jack feels uneasy and has a right to be so. The creatures want to come inside the building, why ? Julia is coming from the valley but he doesn't trust her anymore. Jack and a few friends must travel in the desert's night air and find the dust creatures unknown nest, destroy or be destroyed by them, that is the fact. Venturing down a slippery slope into the darkness of a cave, with menacing things below requires big courage, not many have...A great high- tech thriller, for the modern reader, as only Michael Crichton writes them, so well.

This is the only book I have intentionally left on a plane after reading it. It is so mind-numbingly stupid as to defy belief. Its pretty sad when completely nonsensical science gets combined with a dumb story. Get either of them about right and I'm happy, get both of them terribly wrong and I want my money back.

I felt like it was time for another Michael Crichton novel. Been awhile since I went through Jurassic Park and Lost World. And it’s rare when I read books of this length. But with the author’s raw talent, as he creates these fantastical elements using real world possibilities, along with memorable characters, is really something awesome to behold. Now this was a solid science fiction thrillride. Not my preferred genre, but I ended up really enjoying some of the technical aspects of the story. The characters were all damn good and Jack was a top notch lead. I felt like the children were built up quite a bit in the early portion of the book, especially Nicole and her parental conflicts, but they sort of became an afterthought. I also didn’t love the ending, which I suppose was the most sensible way to conclude the plot, but it just fell a bit flat for me. A less obvious conclusion would have been a better finale. Now there are a lot of themes here that parallel AI and our current predicament. The fact that this was written decades ago is pretty amazing, as things were much different in the early 2000s as compared to today. But the lingering question of how far should we take certain ambitions hangs in the balance. Many different perspectives and many different pros vs cons. And it will continue to be something that is a topic of conversation for a long time. However, when in doubt, it never hurts to reflect on core logic. That being…just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. I’m starting to sound like a disciple of Dr Ian Malcolm’s chaos theory, aren’t I? But the author has a fair amount of commentary throughout that will get you pondering some heavy concepts, and, while not Crichton’s strongest showing, is still a very, very good and interesting experience.