Jurassic Park: A Novel

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars | 27,610 ratings

Price: 19.1

Last update: 01-07-2025


Top reviews from the United States

Melissa moon
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully thrilling with surprising realism.
Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2018
Michael Crichton does an outstanding job at merging realism with science fiction with his most popular novel ‘Jurassic Park’. The mix between just enough realistic details and events blends perfectly with the somewhat hard to believe premise of recreating dinosaurs that take over their habitat. Between the excellent setting buildup and compelling characters that have a very strong sense of humanity, this book is perfect for anyone looking for a fun book to read. ‘Jurassic Park’ also has a deep underlining meaning often portrayed through the character Ian Malcolm. Ian Malcolm really describes the situation and boils them down into what seems like a real-life scenario, through his deep philosophical under tones to his description of patterns throughout nature, giving this book a surprisingly thoughtful and concerning tone that correlates with the world around you. Crichton splits the book perfectly as you bounce between characters and scenarios, changing the mood drastically, whilst still maintaining the flow of the novel between chapters.
Whilst the first 50 pages or so can seem like a task, as soon as the cast gets on their way and begin establishing these bonds and showing their true character, you will find yourself glued to the book until the final few pages. Once the climax starts, it does not stop until the very last page, where you will find yourself thoroughly enjoying the journey Crichton created. The two young children in this book, Lex and Tim, are also outstanding contributions and are actually really competent for their age, and their journey with Dr. Grant leads to the 3 establishing strong bonds through the countless life or death situations.
The description and realism of the process of creating dinosaurs and the dinosaurs themselves makes it immediately apparent that Crichton spent hours upon hours of research to make sure everything he was saying was factually realistic. Between how they obtained the dinosaur DNA and the entire shady and grim process Wu and Hammond do not tell you is really great and surprisingly interesting. Also, the great descriptions of violence and gore is done quite well and Crichton shifts between sudden and intense descriptions, to very subtle small references leading up to certain characters demise. This switch of tones and descriptions really adds to the entire novel through the outstanding use of words.
The description of scenery and surroundings is also very adept in this novel, and it makes you almost feel like you are truly in a humid, moist theme-park located in a random island of the coast of Costa Rica. The description of the giant and cumbersome beast’s and the intelligent input Dr. Sattler and other characters bring to the table is also very interesting to watch as it grows and expands almost seamlessly. And no two dinosaurs are remotely alike, they are all so different and portray completely different ideas of what you may know about dinosaurs.
This book was truly a joy to read and if you are on the fence about buying it, please do so, you will not regret it. Crichton’s ability to write such a genius piece whilst keeping it thrilling and entertaining with intelligent details and an immersive setting to tie it together is truly amazing and outstanding. This is one of the most compelling novels I have read and I greatly recommend you purchase this book to experience Crichton’s expert abilities.
FoxysMom
5.0 out of 5 stars Fun action adventure
Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2015
Before I say anything about the book, I need to say Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park: The Lost World, are probably two of my all time favorite movies so I can’t really help but compare the books to the movies. I’ve probably watched those a thousand times. The movie were perfection and set the bar high; I never read the book because I was afraid it would suck and then how would I view the movie? Alternatively, what if the book was better and then the movie suddenly sucked? The third movie was a total disappointment. It would be a long time before I figured out the third movie had no book to support it, and I would then attribute the bad plotline to the fact that the story had been nothing more than box office fan fiction. Now with advertisements for a fourth Jurassic Park, and a second fan fiction, I found myself once again intrigued and captivated by test-tube dinosaurs… And hoping the 4th is a better fiction than the 3rd considering it too is inspired by its predecessors and not actually based on a pre-written plotline. So I worked up the courage and opened the book.

A short summary probably isn’t necessary with the story’s fame, but just in case, here goes. Eccentric billionaire John Hammond is the founder of a biotechnology company, InGen. He’s working on a top-secret project: A state of the art genetics lab with a resort on a privately owned island off Costa Rica where the main attractions are genetically engineered dinosaurs. But after locals begin complaining of strange animal attacks, Hammond’s investors want the project investigated for safety reasons. Enter paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, paleobotanist Ellie Sattler, mathematician Ian Malcolm, and lawyer Donald Gennaro; it’s their job to assess the park’s value and safety measures. Also meet John Hammond’s grandkids, Alexis and Tim who’re just here for the tour. Unfortunately, they’re all arriving in time to witness what happens when a disgruntled employee takes revenge on a dinosaur zoo. Chaos ensues.

I’ve never been more relieved by a book’s excellence! Of course, the book was very different from the movie in some ways. John Hammond isn’t a jolly Santa-like Dino-nut who wants to bring adventure to the world’s children; oh no, he’s just an overambitious money-grubbing douche-bag who won’t listen to reason. And Alan Grant? He loves kids. (That was actually harder to get used to!) And if you’ve seen the movies and know that the velociraptors are supposed to be the villains of the story; they are but the T-Rex is almost as bad. Maybe he can’t see you moving, but he’s going to track you like a bloodhound.

I actually didn’t mind the differences. It was like having two people look out the same window and having them each describe their first impression. Nobody ever views the world exactly the same way as the person next to them, even when they’re looking at the same thing. So going from the movie to the book was like experiencing the story through someone else’s eyes. It was just as beautiful as before, just different. I loved ‘seeing’ the paddocks teaming with strange animals for the very first time; hearing about the sounds they could have produced, feeling character reactions. The banter between long-winded Ian Malcolm and the employees were fascinating even as Grant stood by, being both a main character and oddly quiet observer.

My only complaint with the plot had to do with Arnold finding the products of Dennis’s sabotage. Something about “the security system is down.” Basically, security is security; it’s not an either or kind of thing. How can a company so genius it can use DNA to raise the dead forget to think about two separate security systems? Or rather why would human security and animal security be tied so disastrously together? It seems you would have to worry about locking down the humans at a resort in the event of an animal escape. It would also seem in the event of a natural disaster you’d want those fences on a different system, on a back up generator, to protect guests… Or am I forgetting the year this story was written; maybe with tech at our fingertips I’m forgetting how limited it once was. And I’m not saying the fictional-theoretical security system couldn’t still have been sabotaged, I’m just saying regardless of human interference, one system to control both inhabitants of the island seems rather short sighted…

The book was a fun adventure with just enough science talk to make the story plausible. The movie version may have changed some things around, it still managed to keep the integrity of the book. Although, the two endings were very different… So different it made me think about The Lost World and of course now I’m reading that.

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