Wow, the first novel Jurassic Park was much much better. This novel, The Lost World, had similarities as the first one, but lack the freshness & originality factors. The main plots of this novel again revolves around the velociraptors & the T-Rex chasing & terrorizing people. I felt the storylines of this book got repetitive & boring pretty quick… I would only recommend this book to big dinosaur fans or big fans of Michael Crichton.

The Lost World is not a very good book. The story is a slog to start and the characters are very weak. So weak that if any of them had actually been eaten by the constantly hungry dinosaurs I would've been like: shrug.
As the story progressed and I waited impatiently to find out: would they actually solve the mystery of the missing Dr Levine and go to the island of dinosaurs--as if there was a chance of that not happening--I was introduced to a series of these weak characters and it then became a struggle to decide who I wanted to be eaten first.
Initially I really wanted one or both of the two genius kids to get chomped. Their place in the book was so formulaic, so PC, and so contrived that it marred the over-all story. They were there simply to add some emotion to a flat read. It didn't work since you just knew neither of them would die.(Side note: Every author should kill a main/well liked character every 5 or 6 books just to keep the possibility out there.)
The next on my list of those characters who I wished would just get torn to shreds was Richard Levine, who was a know-it-all bore. It would've been good for him to have been killed very early in the book(maybe chapter 4?)--just as long as he didn't linger in his demise. Whenever Levine opened his mouth he would go on and on, until I found myself skimming.
Third on my hit-list was Sarah Harding...I mean Dr Sarah Harding(Everyone has PhDs and multiple PhDs and everyone is all so brilliant that it's tiresome.) Though I would have liked to see Sarah become Dino-kibble it wasn't going to happen. She was a female Tarzan and it was a wonder she didn't kill a T-Rex with a spear. Uhg. I get tired of the PC world (Though to be fair the dinosaurs weren't at all scary. In one scene Dr Levine is stalking a T-rex on a bicycle, completely unafraid, which had me wondering: why did they come to rescue him?)
Ironically, the only person that I really wanted to live was a character who had died in the first book. For some reason the author resurrects Ian Malcolm. If you remember, Malcolm hated dinosaurs, yet for some reason he tags along on expedition to a dinosaur infested island to find Levine, a man he really doesn't like. It's completely out of character for him and makes no sense. In fact in the first few chapters he's completely against the idea and then pop! He changes his mind with no real reason given.
So all the characters suck and this is because they aren't in-depth people with strong desires and motivations, instead they are talking props. They all seemed to sit about either spewing sciencey knowledge or receiving sciencey knowledge; this they take turns at doing. And everyone is a genius, or so we are told. Judging by their actions however, they are a bunch of morons who deserve to be eaten.
So much for the characters, how about the story itself?
Dinosaurs are scary. Run everyone. Bad guys die. Good guys live. It was a cheap imitation of a good book: Jurassic Park. I wouldn't bother with this sequel.
If you enjoyed this review you'll probably like my Youtube reviews--be warned, I enjoy some good snark! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ6D...

Someone please explain to me why I've never read any Michael Crichton before when his books are clearly now my new, go-to binge read! This is the follow up to Jurassic Park and takes place some years after the fateful events the first book closes on. Old characters unwillingly return, but are joined by some new members, as they explore a new island that is inhabited by some more prehistoric creatures who have no right to be dwelling there.

Just like the first book, Crichton has created a fun adventure story that was fuelled by suspense and high-action but was backed by dense scientific explanations in a variety of areas. No scene ever felt bogged down by the latter or rushed by the former. I was as compelled to keep reading late into the night as I was by the first book and, I believe, by all the Crichton I have yet to read and won't be able to stop myself immediately doing so.

Book review ‘The Lost World by Michael Crichton

‼️ Spoilers ahead ‼️

Another reread, again dinos! Yes, I’m a dino-freak! I admit it!

Something has survived, was the tagline for this book (and movie) which is definitely true in a few ways.

Richard Levine thinks there’s a lost world somewhere on an island off the coast of Costa Rica. And he is determined to prove it. He enlists a lot of people for this cause: an animal behaviourist, Sarah Harding, Thorne and Eddie Carr, engineers that develop a high-tech trailer where they can live in when on the island and an unexpected survivor of the Jurassic Park debacle six years before, Ian Malcolm. But only Ian knows what to expect. And the Levine departs for the lost world alone and it suddenly becomes a rescue mission. In the meantime Biosyn, the firm that has Dodgson on their payroll, are up to anything to get dino-DNA, after they lost a lot of money on Nedry and never got what they paid for!

This is another exciting chapter (and a fun reread) in Crichton’s dino saga! I’m sure there will be people that will be less a fan of this book but for me this just completes the storyline.
Now I’m going to have to read my other dino-books

The Lost World starts off slow but the final 200 pages are full of action-packed scenes. Hyped for the release of Jurassic World Dominion.

The story goes that Steven Spielberg flush with the success of the first Jurassic Park movie, itself an adaptation of a Michael Chrichton novel, decided to try and repeat his success by commissioning the author to write a sequel to his original novel (which the first movie was based on) which they could then adapt into a movie.
Whether or not that's true I cannot say but I will say that do not base your initial judgement of this book or the prospect of reading it on the lacklustre utter turkey that the film turned out to be.

In many respects, the novel is everything the film should have been and wasn't. Not only did Spielberg fiddle with a lot of the key elements of the story but completely remove some of the best parts of the whole story!

I won't go into details as it'll only include spoilers but I've lost track of how many times I've read this book other than it being somewhere in the region of twenty or more times. It's THAT good!
If you're a fan of Michael Chricton, dinosaurs or just rip-roaring adrenaline-fuelled rides, you should give this book the read it clearly deserves!

Forget the movie altogether, witness what should have been!

Jurassic Park was pretty good, but this book was rather poor. It reads like a bad movie. The author is so intent upon pushing Chaos Theory upon the reader that he often forces the characters to behave way, way, WAY out of their habits in order to force things to go wrong.

People suddenly do really stupid things. People forget that they have weapons. All attempts to prepare for a situation automatically fail, because it's completely impossible (not just improbable) for a prepared individual to actually be ready to face the situation he was preparing for.

Even the identities of the characters were engineerd to be movie-friendly. As he wrote this book, the author knew that he would have a film deal upon completion. He constructed the story so that Hollywood wouldn't have to work too hard to dumb it down.

I won't spoil the ending, but you should know that it was stupid. It involved the best animal scientists in the world making a mistake that would have been caught by the folks at your local zoo.

It was kind of like watching people play craps in an alley with a math professor. Each time the dice are thrown, the guy runs forward, picks them up and carefully sets them down with a less favorable result, all the while ranting about how random everything is.

In a situation like that, the other guys in the alley would have just beaten the tar out of him. That's what I wanted to do when I read this.

It's a dumb book which hides behind a bunch of big, smart words. Don't bother with it. If you watch the movie you'll at least get to see the dinosaurs running around.

This was the first time for me - I've seen the movie quite a number of times (yes, I'm one of the people who like it, sue me!) but had never read the book before.

Many years have passed since the "incident" on Isla Nublar. InGen almost went belly-up, Hammond is dead (first major difference to the movie right there) and nobody is allowed to talk about what happened. There are some rumours here or there, making it almost a myth.
We're meeting Malcolm again, who is hired by a rich kid to help him locate the mysterious "site B". A few other recognizable names pop up, too, but the characters are vastly different from the ones in the movie.
Anyway, they eventually figure out where site B is, go there (some smuggling on board because people are stupid that way) and the rest, as you probably guessed, is ... dino chowder. *cackles*

I have to admit that this was not quite as good as the first. Neither the characters assembled nor the story itself, but it did have Chrichton's signature blend of real-life science with slightly futuristic spins that end in thrilling action. Moreover, we finally got some highly interesting background information about Hammond's operation You know, what went on behind the curtain. And putting the pieces together was a lot of fun!

Some might not always enjoy Malcolms detailed remarks on this or that, but I find him funny (and interesting). And no, not only because I pictured him as Jeff Goldblum. Though that helped. *lol*

Center stage, of course, belongs to the dinos though. At least for me. The tenacious compies for example. Gotta love the little buggers. And yes, it is a metaphor for man's hubris and the consequences of meddling ... especially when not having full knowledge. And you can never stuff the raptor back into the box.

It was hilarious to "recognize" the people from the movie in this book, like Eddie (see my only status update). I definitely also enjoyed getting more tech details about the equipment and set-up. One could say I work too much with engineers. *lol*

Despite everything, however, I have to say that I like the movie better. Shocking, I know, but it does happen.

Now, apart from this being my first read of this sequel, I also went and got myself the Folio Society's special edition so I have to review it's wonderful slipcase (once again designed to resemble dino skin) and the fantastic illustrations:






So yes, it matches the first one and I'm very happy they grace my shelf together with the non-fiction books about dinos.

Read it, liked it, Jurassic Park was better. What I loved about this book and still remember pretty well--it taught me about Chaos Theory, which fascinated me for quite a while after reading this.

i can finally say to people that i’ve watched the movies AND read the books !!

I still maintain that without Ian Malcolm this book would've received a 2-2.5 star rating because without his snark I would've been bored to deathhhh. As it is, 4 stars feels generous but that ending just put me in a good mood. Good book, not sure it was necessary because nothing will top the original, but Malcolm spits so much truth about theories and what humans think we know that I'd say it deserves a read if you liked Jurassic Park.

...Can we have the new Jurassic World movie now plz?

Proseguono le avventure al cardiopalma con questa storia!
Trovo sempre sconvolgente quanto le parole possano scatenare immagini attraverso la fantasia.
Da appassionato dei film derivati dai libri di Crichton, riscoprirmi a vivere le vicende in una nuova chiave attraverso le pagine è una grande sorpresa.
Un libro che, se siete amanti del thriller (e dei dinosauri) non deve mancare nella vostra collezione.