Next by Michael Crichton Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Next
Book Review: Not his best, but highly enjoyable
Summary: 4 Stars
I get the impression that Michael Crichton wrote this with two objectives: to entertain and to set up a film.
Next revisits the idea behind Jurassic Park, and with it, the associated issues of man and nature and how you control the interaction. Here one can add the medico-legal backdrop about ownership of genes. But essentially, Crichton sets this one up as a terrifically entertaining romp with some great cartoonish moments with talking apes and parrots, lots of kids and some sinister goatee'd baddies. The corporate backdrop is more like Disclosure and there is a good dose of sexual shennanigans in there with some neat ironies and commupances.
At one point it read like Whacky Races for geneticists. I liked the interspersal with the cuttings which give it an episodic nature. This helps is race along but its occasionally tricky to keep up with which bio lab is which and who works for who! Its all great fun. Crichton clearly enjoyed writing it. While it lacks some of the coherence and depth of his better works the format works well and I think it accomplishes what it sets off to do.
You'll enjoy Next. You'll be able to picture it as a movie in your head. One day it will be on the screen, rest assured. It could prick your sense of reality that such absurb situations can arise in theory or in practice but being set one foot in the extraordinary law courts of America, it won't surprise you half as much as it should!
Book Review: Not my favorite Crichton book, fizzled and died at the end.
Summary: 2 Stars
Wow, I was really disappointed with this book. It started out so interesting and unique and then it go weird with all the science journal articles throughout, and it just fizzled out and got stupid at the end. It is really too bad because there were times when I thought things were going to get good and then they didn't. I think this could have been a great book, but it turned out to be a complete dud!Book Review: Not the typical Crichton thriller, but a good read
Summary: 4 Stars
Enjoyable read...not the typical thriller that I have come to expect from Crichton, but good nonetheless. My biggest critique of this book was having two characters of the same age and in the same scenes named Jamie.
Michael T. Hanley, CPA is the Managing Partner of the Smithtown, NY CPA Firm, Merl & Hanley, LLP and the author of Effective Tax Planning for the MicroBusiness: 30 Minutes With...A Certified Public Accountant: Effective Tax Planning for the MicroBusiness
Book Review: Not too bad
Summary: 3 Stars
This is the first Crichton novel I've read since Airframe in 9th grade, when it was first released. I'd read everything from Andromeda Strain through Airframe, and got bored with the last.
I just finished this book, and based on that and reading reviews of everything else since Airframe, it sounds like Crichton's storytelling fell apart throughout the naughts. If I'm right, he pumped out novels in the past ten years twice as fast as the 2o years before it. And that is generally the way it felt as I was reading Next... that he'd written this almost as fast as the 3 days it took me to read it.
Good points: A lot of interesting ideas about research and law, fast paced, and generally entertaining. A number of reviews complain about the loose plot, unresolved subplots, and numerous story threads, but the fragmented structure of the novel seems to be a purposeful indictment of touch-and-go practices in scientific media coverage and mass produced court rulings.
Bad: Most of the characters aren't worth reading about, and the constant swearing, needless (and very graphic) sexualizing of adolescent girls and a few children, endless banalities, and above all, the philandering of a majority of many, many characters, including ones we are supposed to like, is immature and beneath Crichton.
If you want the best of Crichton, check out Travels.
Book Review: Not up to Crichton standards
Summary: 2 Stars
I was surprised not to enjoy this book. It skipped around between characters excessively, and there were some fairly glaring errors (at least to me as a bird owner)that I would not have expected from someone who obviously tries to research his works at fully as possible. I hope no parrot owners out there have fed their birds avocado, as was done in the book...this can be lethal. Also...parrots don't have a sense of smell. Now if this was because Gerard was transgenic, I think it should have been elaborated on...could have been mentioned in a single sentence...no problem.
All in all...I'd rather spend my time rereading some of his other work.