Michael Crichton: Prey

[ShelbyS]

Prey

has anyone else read this?

I've been a Crichton fan for years and I was very dissapointed by this novel.

To say the least it was boreing. The action sequences are no where in the range of his normal standard. And the attempt at suspence is poor.

On the upside, he doesn't dissapoint with the science, that at least is credible. But the characters are poorly developed.

 

[Krakatau]

I thought the book was not bad. The suspense was kind of lame, somehow I can't be scared of clouds of nanobots. But as always I liked the science in the book.

Krakatau

 

[Dave]

Actually, I think it is the science in the book that was the problem with the suspense. Every chapter the story was halted to give a short lecture on why it was possible. Personally I didn't need that much detail, and anyone who didn't understand it would need it even less.

I do think that a swarm of nanobots can be as scary as a dinosaur, more so, since they could have taken over the world rather than just an island. I think he did us a disservice by introducing their weaknesses as impossible to overcome. They overcame resistence to high winds, and did many seemingly impossible things, so why not tolerance to magnetic fields and viruses.

I agree with the character development comment. He threw us some cardboard cut-out stereotypes and left them like that. Only Julia was given any development, yet I always guessed she was taken over in some way, and she never was as evil or as sexual as the 'Borg Queen' in "Star Trek; First Contact", with whom I think she bears a fairly striking parallel.

 

[KatDonovan]

I agree that the technicalities in this book slowed it down. It was a great book, but kinda hard to get through with all the techno jargon. His books are always heavy on the big word explinations, but it just didn't seem to go as well with this one.

Kat

 

[Kanazaka]

I finished reading Prey earlier today, and I liked it very much. I'll agree that most of the characters were rather one-dimensional, but Mae, Jack (despite some empathic inconsistencies toward the end) and Julia felt rather real to me. Jack and Julia's relationship is what most hooked me in this novel, so I was bummed by what eventually happened to Julia (and puzzled by Jack's reaction, although he had estranged himself from her early in the novel and even before then). I also liked many of the action sequences, as well as some of the nanoswarm's behaviors. I agree that this novel wasn't as suspenseful as most of Crichton's previous novels, but I appreciated the suspense that was there. But I do feel that he transparently contrived at least a couple of the so-called mysteries, and didn't do much to make me wonder about other solutions to those mysteries. And I also agree--upon further reflection--that some of the exposition is long-winded. Overall, though, I enjoyed the novel for the page-turner that Crichton intended it to be.