Having enjoyed Jurassic Park, I was eager to dive into this one and wow, this was equally as thrilling as book one.

This author is an absolute master of raising your anxiety and creating tension you feel you can touch.

This book is fantastic in so many ways. It gets right under your skin and it's frightening but equally it's making you think about science, the planet, our existence.

Ian Malcolm goes down as an unforgettable character for me. What a legend.

And while there were traces of it in book one, this book has amazing female characters. I've many complaints regarding male authors and their female characters but credit where its due, Crichton nails it. There are no damsels in distress here. I hope teen girls are picking this book up and being inspired by the confident inspirational females in this book.

This duology was a delight. I've no idea why I waited so long to read it.

Five stars.

I think the first book is so much better. It took me a while to get into this, but once I did, I flew through to the end. Enjoyed the re-read

I could listen to Dr Malcolm forever.

What I learned from The Lost World: The only people worthy of surviving in Crichton's world are geniuses. Everyone else is destined to be fodder/feed for terrorizing thunder lizards.

The Lost World suffers from two things: First off, if you've ever read Jurassic Park, then you know that TLW's protagonist, Ian Malcolm, is, in fact, dead. That's right... he died in Jurassic Park, but since they couldn't convince Sam Neill to return for the movie, Crichton rewrote history so that Malcolm somehow survived (never mind that they verified he was dead, and then the whole island was napalmed with his corpse on it).

The second problem is that every single important person in The Lost World is some sort of certifiable genius. Malcolm's two tagalong kids are both gifted. Everyone who comes along is some form of expert of some field. The only people who aren't talented/gifted/smart are the regular folks, and they all end up being the bad guys of the book. Seriously, I'm not kidding. The good guys are all geniuses, and the bad guys are all... not. And, naturally, the geniuses survive because they are geniuses, while the bad guys all die because they are not so smart.

The Lost World is Crichton's way of effectively kissing his own ass.

3.5 stars
Whereas Jurassic Park perfectly balanced scenes of horror with themes of capitalism and the arrogance of man, The Lost World lacked that balance. The first 70% of this book felt like reading a textbook. The last 30% had some good scenes, and I did enjoy a lot of the monologues in the first section of the book, but it just was paced so awkwardly. Bonus points for the girl boss that is Sarah though!

Can't believe I've never reviewed this one. It's not very good, Crichton hated writing sequels and ended most of his books in such a way that a sequel would be impossible. This includes Jurassic Park and so this one feels very tacked on, like it was done for a paycheck and nothing else.

4.25/5

Ta kontynuacja nie odstaje od pierwszej części - znów dostałam świetną rozrywkę!

this is legitimately a bad book. not even camouflaged dinosaurs can save it.

demorou tipo 200 paginas até ficar interessante mas compensou cause dinosaurs ♡♡♡ also livro bué feminista provavelmente sem intenção disso mas amei a gaja principal she was slaying left and right

I find a lot of people discuss the "resurrection" of Ian Malcolm in their reviews, and I'd like to throw in my two cents. It's true, Malcolm is mentioned as dead at the end of Jurassic Park. To be exact, Muldoon is telling Grant what's happened to everyone else as they're flying away in the helicopter:
"What about Malcolm?" Grant said.
Muldoon shook his head.
The epilogue mentions the Costa Rican government not permitting the burial of John Hammond or Ian Malcolm (amongst a list of other ways they dragged their feet and covered things up). But that's it.

My point is this: it's not as if Crichton tricked us by delivering a long death scene where Ian Malcolm said his last goodbyes and made some final point about evolution and chaos theory - then got lazy and just reintroduced Malcolm into the next book. Malcolm's "death" in JP was not seen, and only vaguely mentioned (unlike every other major character who died in the book). Also, the explanation given in The Lost World as to why the others thought he was dead was completely plausible - he was simply so close to death that he was left for dead.

I'll get off of my soapbox now. For me, The Lost World was a satisfying and exciting read. I think I read it in about a day and a half the first time, and I've re-read it a few times since.

The Lost World takes place six years after the Jurassic Park incident, and just like in the movie version, Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Sattler did not return but Dr. Ian Malcolm does return for his role. The Lost World was an entertaining read, although I'll say not as good as Jurassic Park, for a number of reasons, but I won't go into all of them. I found myself skipping through some of the unnecessary parts that weren't really important to the story but when I came to some of the important parts I was hooked.

A lot of new dinosaurs are introduced to us in this book that were not in Jurassic Park, a lot of them I'd never even heard of, some of them I even needed to Google them to see if they were even real since this book was fiction, and they were real. The book was very different from the movie, and to me there didn't really seem to be any similarities accept the character of Sarah Harding who was played by Julianne Moore (Who I've always had a big crush on, HAHA) in the movie.

Some parts of the story seemed to drag but it also did have some really nail-biting parts and many twists and turns throughout. Like I said, it's not up there with Jurassic Park but still worth reading.

“What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.”

I decided to re-read this sequel after recently re-reading  Jurassic Park. A couple of scenes had stood out in my memory--stolen dinosaur eggs, an attack on a trailer, chameleon dinosaurs, and a particularly memorable death--but I had forgotten almost everything else. For example, I had forgotten that, because Sam Neill was unwilling to return for the sequel movie, and Jeff Goldblum was willing, Ian Malcolm's off-screen death at the end of the first book was magically undone.

If you've never read The Lost World, because you assume you know the plot from the movie, you have not been spoiled. Indeed, there is very little relationship between the plot of this book and the plot of the movie. There is no Godzilla-like attack on San Diego in the book.

The Lost World is a solid sequel, though it not only suffers by comparison to the original, but it rips  Jurassic Park off in places and there are echoes of familiar characters and plot points. Still, it's classic Crichton, mixing intriguing science and gripping action scenes. Recommended.