Jurassic Park is a classic movie that I have seen at least a dozen times. The book, however, I only read once – probably three decades ago. Although the movie stayed very true to the book, I was surprised by just how many pieces of the book felt brand new to me.
The premise is excellent, and has spawned an entire franchise of movies. The story is a great implementation of the premise as well, and Crichton does a good job of making all of his science fiction feel plausible while not wasting pages on unnecessary justifications.
The characters are a weaker point in the story. Most of them are not particularly fleshed out, as their main purpose is to fill their particular role in the plot. It’s representative of Crichton’s writing in general – he clearly loves the science part of the process, but seems less interested in building an emotional connection between the readers and his world and its characters. He does a good job of building out the horror elements we got from the film, but does not manage to set the scene of wonder in nearly the same fashion. It’s easy to forget in this novel how majestic and wonderful seeing dinosaurs would be, particularly for the kids and the paleontologists.
It’s a great book, 8 out of 10.
My Score
Goodreads Score (out of 5)
4.13