Rating: 
Summary: Good start with rapid decline and too much tech talk!
Review: This begins in dramatic fashion and immediately hooked me on suspicion alone: What was happening to this family!? To this man's wife!? As the tale unfolded, it did keep its grip until the husband takes on a consulting job with his wife's employer. The job was taken reluctantly (past bad-blood), but allowed the husband an attempt to get to the bottom of his wife's strange behavior at home. What follows is a decline into nano-talk and technical babble that severely overshadowed what could have been a gripping drama to the last page. Some of the reasoning/explanation of the swarm behavior and other science-induced narrative made my mind wander off the story,with a hope that a reasonable, believable drama would return in the latter chapters. It didn't happen.
Too many books, too little time. When is the next Nelson DeMille novel arriving?
Rating: 
Summary: Good
Review: Enjoyed it. It's probably the best thriller since Craig Furrnas' THE SHAPE. And I love all the scientific detail Crichton backs his plot with.
Rating: 
Summary: A fun book
Review: This book follows the same 30+ year-old Crichton formula as _The Andromeda Strain_, _Jurassic Park_, _Sphere_, _Timeline_, etc.: a cautionary tale of science and technology involving an insolated location, ending in disaster. The characters are clichés (our introduction to the adolescent daughter includes her yelling "I hate you!" to one of her parents) and some of the plot twists are clumsy. But hey, I bet you already knew that without reading the book. Why? This is a Michael Crichton novel, and you've probably read him before. Some of the other reviewers seemed to expect something different, and I'm not sure why. I guess it's this kind of thinking that keeps the lottery in business.So you know what you're getting. And with that expectation, I found this to be a fun, page-turning book. This time, Crichton writes in 1st person so that he can stop the story and have the viewpoint character explain points of technology. I found this mildly annoying, but the alternatives would probably have been more awkward. Overall, it was worth my time. I was entertained, and that's worth four stars. Honestly, though, you've read this book before. If you're interested in reading about emergent systems without the fiction, I enjoyed _Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software_ by Stephen Johnson. Or, you could do worse than discovering a new author for your reading time; there are plenty of great writers out there that would love to have you as a reader.
Rating: 
Summary: What could have been, but wasn't...
Review: The title "Prey" is, presumably, derived from the "predatorprey" programming used to create swarms of predatory particles on behalf of the United States Military. In short, things get out of hand and the particles esacpe into the surrounding desert [bad subcontractors] only to adapt to - and take advantage of - the surrounding environment as they kill everything in sight. The problem is, the action takes place in such a limited area, involving so few people that the novel loses its punch. Granted, the concept worked well for a very similarly themed screenplay, "The Thing," but swarms of collectively intelligent - and malicious - nanoparticles just screams FULL SCALE ATTACK ON MAJOR URBAN CENTER. I can see the U.S. Special Forces playing cat-and-mouse with an elusive enemy that contines to outmanuever them...and so on. Unfortunately, I wasn't in on the plot-making process. My suggestion: Wait until the book comes out in paperback.
Rating:
Summary: Starts With Promise Settles For Less
Review: I've been an avid fan of Crichton since the start. His style of writing combines technical details with a sense of adventure I've rarely found with other writers. In Prey the premise made me purchase his book as soon as I saw it. The first half was great, building suspense for the next chapter. However, the second half fell short, and I thought I was reading a screen play for the movie of the week. I expected more. As books go I would recommend it as a good technothriller, but not up to Crichton's usual par. I tend to reread his work again and again. This one I'll save for a lazy day at the beach after I've read everything else.
Rating: 
Summary: A terrible excuse for a book
Review: Not only is this book writen with all the literary finese of a 7th grader, the entire plot is unbelievable, even as science fiction. It reads like a horrible movie, with completely unsympathetic characters and just bad science all around. If you want a good sci-fi book on nanotechnology, try The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson.
Rating:
Summary: Anne-Marie dumped him because he can no longer write!!
Review: This book is just a poorly recycled version of Sphere set in the desert. It does start out pretty well in the prologue, but then just yadda yadda yadda!
Rating:
Summary: Hitchcockian thriller
Review: The best science fiction has always been somewhat preachy. In the fifties we were warned on atomic dangers ("The Day the Earth Stood Still") and in the seventies, environmental terror was a frequent theme. Now Crichton warns us against the intersection of technology, computer science and biology in a masterful work reminiscent of Hitchcock's The Birds. Swarms of microscopic molecular computers which are programmed to mimic predators in the wild, rapidly evolve into shaft shifting artificial organisms which threaten the survival of their human creators. Jack Forman, recently unemployed software engineer, finds life as a fulltime stay at home dad frustrating especially since his wife's career in nanotechnology is spectacularly successful. Unknown to Jack his program which mimics predator/prey behavior has been incorporated in his wife's product. After something goes terribly wrong Jack is dispatched to reign in the mutating artificial creatures. It is a trip fraught with danger and clever plot twists. Alfred Hitchcock would have made a hell of a movie out of this one!
Rating:
Summary: Ouch!
Review: Started out good, but fell apart at the end, where it turned into an Ed Wood movie.
Rating:
Summary: Prey opens new genre
Review: If nothing else, Crichton has opened up the world of nanotech to the mass audience, science and science fiction on the level of space travel since it has so many uses, from cellular repair in Cryonics patients,to manufacture of microscopic computer chips. The story is fast moving, and aside from the rather thin character development,offers terrific and fresh new reading.
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