Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton

by Karen S. Wiesner

   

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs! Seriously, with both dragons and dinosaurs, I'm interested instantly in anything, everything. From the time I was a little kid, dinosaurs fascinated me. I devoured whatever I could get my hands on when it came to them. I was like the kid Timmy in the movie. Every bit I got made me want more, more, more! Even as an adult, I'm drawn to them. Michael Crichton's two books on the subject, Jurassic Park and The Lost World, are some of the best fiction available on this topic. Note that the posthumously written novel Dragon Teeth, though it deals with dinosaur fossils and paleontology, isn't set in the same world as the two I'm focusing on in this review (but is nevertheless worthy of being read on its own considerable merits). 

Jurassic Park was published in 1990 with the sequel, The Lost World (as you'd expect, an homage to Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel that had the same name), coming in 1995. The follow-up title included familiar faces from the original as well as all new characters. In 1993, a blockbuster film adaption directed by Steven Spielberg was released to critical and commercial acclaim (at the time, it became the highest grossing film ever). It spawned numerous sequels, all fantastic in various degrees, though there were some cringing burps that could have been avoided altogether if the books had been followed closer. Eventually, in the first three movies, the basic, most intriguing scenarios that took place in the books are covered, so I was appeased. My husband cringes whenever a new installment comes out in the movie series, saying sarcastically, "Hmm, what are the odds that the dinosaurs get loose and try to kill everyone?" Okay, okay, we know what's going to happen from one movie to the next, but dinosaurs. Dinosaurs!!! And, in each film adaptation, they get bigger and badder. I implore you, what's not to love?

At its heart, these two stories are cautionary tales about unregulated genetic engineering. In Jurassic Park, a zoological park (or, maybe more aptly, a biological preserve) is designed showcasing genetically recreated dinosaurs via amber preservation and DNA extraction in an authentic environment. The owner is a billionaire named John Hammond, who founded the bioengineering firm InGen. Investors become wary when strange animal attacks are reported in Costa Rica, where the theme park was built on an island called Isla Nublar. To silence them, Hammond decides to give a tour of the park to several people he hopes will endorse it in advance of it opening. The guest list includes a famous paleontologist Alan Grant; his graduate student Ellie Sattler; a mathematician and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm; the lawyer Gennaro that represents the investors; along with Hammond's own grandchildren Tim, a dinosaur enthusiast, and his little sister Lex. In a fine bit of foreshadowing, while trekking through the park, Grant finds a velociraptor eggshell. This is the proof that pessimistic Malcolm's assertion of dinosaurs breeding in the park is true despite the geneticists' fervent denial. 

A series of unfortunate events with a bad storm, a bad and traitorous employee, and all-around bad planning collide in rapid succession. The guests and staff are separated, the park safeties and redundancies for keeping the dinosaurs safely behind fences are disabled, and there seems to be no way off the island. 

This author in particular nearly always creates a larger-than-life scenario and populates it with living, breathing people that you find fascinating in every way, that you cab trust their expertise because Crichton builds believability and utter veracity in right from the start of each book, and you care desperately about these well-developed characters. You want them to survive. You want them to kick the mean dinosaurs in their armored fannies and send 'em back where they belong. Even Crichton's villains are fully fleshed out and understandable, which doesn't mean you're not also rooting for them to fall into the nearest big ol' pile of dino doo-doo. 

Following the events in Jurassic Park, we're brought back into the world created there. Though most readers believed Ian Malcolm had been killed in the first book (and he was--you're not crazy), the movie Jurassic Park became such a hit, Crichton was asked to write a sequel (notably, something he'd never done up to that point, and never did again), and that meant resurrecting one of the most beloved characters from the original story. According to Crichton, "Malcolm came back because I needed him. I could do without theothers, but not him because he is the 'ironic commentator' on the action." How he made the transition from sure death to life anew was with little more than a Mark Twain-ian sentence to the effect of, "The rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated." Even if some might call "Foul" about this, I loved Malcolm, and I was thrilled with his return. For one thing, he's hilariously sarcastic and so quotable in the process, frequently in an thrown-over-his-shoulder sort of way as he's already moving on to the next issue. Indulge me as I post a few gems from the mouth of Ian Malcolm taken from both the books and movies: 

"If Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists."

"It's fine if you wanna put your name on something but stop putting it on other people's headstones."

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

"Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun."

"Oh, what's so great about discovery? It's a violent, penetrative act that scars what it explores."

"Let's be clear: The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't go the power to destroy the planet--or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves."

"Change is like death. You don't know what it looks like until you're standing at the gates."

In any case, to get back to the review of the sequel book, four years have passed, Malcolm is alive, and strange animal corpses are washing up on the shores of Costa Rica. Malcolm and wealthy paleontologist, Richard Levine, discover there was actually a Site B for Jurassic Park on nearby Island Sorna. This was the production factory while the theme park on Island Nublar became the sterilized, seemingly harmless front face. When Levine goes missing, Malcolm had no choice but to go after him. With a brilliant team, he launches a rescue to find Levine and explore this "lost world" filled with dinosaurs who have escaped the lab facilities they were being held in and are now creating their own environment. In the process, two young kids who assisted Levine at the university stow away in a pair of specially-equipped RV trailers and end up having to join the expedition--becoming value resources that assist in the team's survival. 

The group discovers that others are on the island: 1) Geneticist Lewis Dodgson (introduced in the first book as the employee of InGen's rival company who sabotaged the theme park and led to its disaster there) and a biologist side-kick to steal dinosaur eggs the company they work for intends to use to start their own theme park, and 2) Dr. Sarah Harding, an ethologist and close friend of Malcolm. Note that this character in the book was nowhere near as annoying as Julianna Moore was in the film version (frankly, she ruined the movie for me with her utter stupidity in every situation, including that foolishly pegged-on, "King Kong" fiasco at the end of an otherwise pretty good movie). In the book, Harding was actually inspiring and a role model for the girl stowaway Kelly (who was a student of Levine's, not Malcolm's daughter, as she was portrayed in the movie). 

Both of these books have literally (pun intended) everything you could ever want in great fiction--amazing characters placed in unforgettable settings, forced to act in situations that challenge them internally and externally. I've read both books countless times over the years since I first discovered them. If you've never read them or haven't read them in a while, I highly recommend you do so at your earliest convenience. You won't regret it. 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie (or two) you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

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