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Summary: good book
Review: Fast paced and easy to read.
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Summary: This was reprinted because.............
Review: I have read that some of you do not understand why I have reprinted White Shark with the title "The Creature". Well, when this book was made into a mini-series, it was decided to name the mini-series "The Creature", so, to go with the original(White Shark), it must have to be reprinted with the new title.
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Summary: Little Comment
Review: I just wanted to say this is White Shark, except with a differant name
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Summary: The Perfect Beach Book!!!
Review: I picked up this book 2 years ago and took it with me on vacation to Florida. I read it in one siiting, on a hammock near the lake!! Well, I was NOT dissapointed!! The story moved quickly and effortlessly and often made me a little nervous about getting "too close" to the water!!!
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Summary: An outstanding book packed with terror and adventure.
Review: I think that this book was a superb story. It was a combination of terror and adventure. Anyone who likes the Jaws movies will like this book. The only bad thing about the book is the ending, in my opinion, it wasn't that believable.
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Summary: A terrific mix of science and imagination
Review: I thought this was a great book with a pleasant mix of science and imagination. Reguardless of what others say, I highly recommend it to anyone. Very factual, and semi-probable.
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Summary: Aaron Boudreau
Review: I'm a picky reader I only read what I know I'll like I saw the mini-seris of this book on tv. Then I saw the so I bought and I couldn't it down! I whould recomend this book to any one who likes to get scared.
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Summary: Jaws is no match for Benchley's Creature.
Review: If Jaws frightened you, Creature will make you wet your pants. Never has a book caught my attention so fast as this one did. Never describing to you what the Creature looks like until the last 30 or so pages. Keeping you guessing, is it a shark? Is it a whale? Is it an underwater dog? (Yes I thought that was what it was.)Benchley made a name for himself with Jaws, and Creature only betters his reputataion. Get this book and read it. With the lights on.
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Summary: fish bait
Review: It's bad enough that Peter Benchley recycled "Jaws" when he wrote "Beast" (a novel about giant squids instead of white sharks; in both books, the monsters feed on the feckless and luckless human beings who just manage to be in or near the water, so even though the star of the book has changed, the menu is still the same). While "Beast" was just a re-tread, "Creature" (originally released as "White Shark") manages to be something worse - strikingly unoriginal, uninspired and not even remotely scary. "Creature" does start out cool - before we know what the creatur is, we learn that it was manmade - a long-forgotten NAZI weapon that has lain undisturbed near the wreck of a U-Boat sunk in the desperate days of the war's end. We don't even know what it looks like...at first anyway. When modern-day divers come upon and salvage the special container in which the creature has been hibernating, they unwittingly unleash it. Benchley has miraculously pulled off something I wouyld have thought impossible - using prose to depict a creature without really saying what it is, a sort of book version of Ridley Scott's "Alien". The creature soon makes its way to America's eastern seaboard where it feeds off the dim populace of a summer town similar to Amity. Luckily, there's a marine biologist/hero around, but he's stumped to explain the mysterious deaths which resemble those of no known predator. Meanwhile, with every appearance of the monster, we're clued into its mysterious origin and appearance. Once we've figured out the secret, however, there's little more to the book then watching the creature feed on the clueless locals, the sort of specimens who dropped like flies in "Jaws" and "Beast" (you'd think the gene-pool of likely victims would have been depleted by now after "Beast"). Benchley doesn't even take the slightest steps to preserve the mystery or at least reveal it in a way that's guaranteed to shock. Instead of having our heroes deduce the creature's artifical nature, a mysterious stranger steps forward and tells all. (Why did the hero have to be a marine biologist? Anybody could have met with "Mr. X", whether he knew his carcharidae or not. Novels like this are typically filled with brainy characters whose intellect seems meaningless - the authors use them to demonstrate how much background information the author amassed researching his book, but seldom to drive the plot. In short, Benchley is so concerned about whether people will think his marine biologist is brilliant that he doesn't make the guy all that smart.) "Creature" quickly becomes less a pastiche of Benchley's other monster books ("Jaws" and "Beast") than one that riffs on movies like "Alien" - unlike other Benchley creations, the creature is an utter anomaly not to be found in books, so it remains hidden, practically invisible until Benchley runs out of ways to describe what it does w/o revealing what it is. The "Alien" idea has some possibilities, challenging the author to think past textbook answers for everything (no bite-radii, recognizable feeding patterns or anything). The idea works for a while and the beast remains a true cypher. But the effort is too much, and, by the nominal climax, we can see the guy in the rubber suit. What a cop-out. This book has no suspense and even kills off attempts to generate some - especially in one scene in which the hero, determined to destroy popularly held myths about sharks, actually swims with a real white shark. It's not only a preposterous scene, but even if it's true, what's the point of including a scene that is otherwise irrelevant to the plot? If Benchley thinks that his books should deal with popular myths, then a book which otherwise suspends your belief is not the way to do it. In that sense, "Creature" is sadly typical of most thrillers - offering you an impossible idea and then slapping you upside the head for buying its fish stories.
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Summary: Peter Benchley's done it again!
Review: Now you must be careful in the water and out! As in Jaws he keeps writing scarier and Scarier things!
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