Rating: 
Summary: Of utility closets and helicopters
Review: I enjoyed this book. It's classic Chrichton: salvation in a utility closet; science in the service of profit; last minute deus ex machina from a helicopter; and pragmatic protagonists. You can almost see the characters' hair blowing in backlit Spielberg way. Cue John Williams music score....What surprised me was the slice-of-life beginning of the main character: a whistle-blowing, down-sized, computer-geek, stay-at-home dad. Then we get what Chrichton does best - explain science and technology in a compelling way. In a nutshell, it was good storytelling.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor prey!
Review: Frankly, I think this is the worst of all his books, I read it twice over two weeks then gave it to Oxfam bookshop! I was so disappointed after Timeline, I shall be more circumspect about buying his books in future. One thought comes to mind - was it really written by MC? What a waste of £10.
Rating: 
Summary: A Hollywood Blockbuster Screenplay
Review: "Prey" has some interesting things to say about the subject of artificial intelligence and nanotechnologies. Unfortunately, Crichton has decided to do his story telling inside a made for Hollywood screenplay rather than a serious novel dealing with serious issues such as the fate of humanity and the life threat that science poses to us. There was a point about three quarters though this screenplay where I got angry and found myself almost talking to the book as I began to think back to what had occurred as what I found myself reading did not in any way jive with what had come before. Crichton does explain these things at the end, but by then I no longer cared enough to think through whether his explanation was really valid or not. By then I was angry that what had attempted to be a serious examination of the cross currents of profit incentives and science producing the end of the world had instead mutated into a Hollywood blockbuster starring computer programmer Brad Pitt who sees that he no longer loves his wife and bonds with Chinese-American virologist Lucy Lieu and defeats the now highly evolved and absolutely unstoppable (in the real world) "swarm", which suddenly begins to make one stupid move after the other during much action that leads to the clichéd big fiery explosion that vaporizes the danger forever and leaves us all safe from harm. Even Jack-the-programmer's kids survive after much vomiting even though by the rules laid down in this screenplay/novel they had no hope. How concerned do we need to be if all the terror leads to another happy ending where we don't need to be concerned? This novel/screenplay ends with this: "But then it kept going, kept evolving. And they let it. *They didn't understand what they were doing*. I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race. I hope it's not. We might get lucky." We didn't even get lucky enough to get a real novel with the required end of the world finish that this material demands. Instead we got a novelist with a medical degree who gave into the very same forces that drive the scientists in "Prey" and the company they work for to produce a "nanoswarm" that would in reality destroy all life on this planet. The driving force in both cases is greed. Greed drives those at the fictional company Xymos to produce a nanoswarm that the Pentagon will pay for (actually you and I would pay for it), and greed drove Michael Crichton to turn this novel into a Hollywood screenplay. *Greed will destroy mankind*. I don't think the artificial life forms created by greedy scientists with the approval of greedy university presidents will bother to write us a tombstone. If you want to understand "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us", then read the article by that name from the April 2000 issue of Wired Magazine by Bill Joy, who just happens to be a computer programmer, the creator of the Unix operating system. You can find it with a search engine. I warn you though; it does not have a happy ending.
Rating:
Summary: He went too far
Review: Michael Crichton again writes cautionary tale about Tech (Nano-bots instead of Dinos this time) pushed too far. Predictably it lashes out and must be thwarted by the protagonist. He is writing same old plotline with the same stock cardboard characters. Still he places just enough background and science information to make it passable until the last half of the book. Then he jumps over the line of willing suspension of disbelief and is then relegated to silliness. This same book written with a more subtle hand could have been chilling. He makes nano-bots into a large visible menace. My only thought is he was trying to write the book to be a movie. It might be a great visual but it ruined the book.
Rating:
Summary: Preyed on THE THING?
Review: Books started fine & with promise. Then halfway through i started getting more & more a sense of deja-vu. Hey I know this story! I suddenly realized it had morphed into a re-write of "THE THING" - MC just totally isolated his few stranded characters in the nevada desert instead of the arctic, created a man made menace instead of an alien, but the rest are pretty much the identical. who is friend? - who is foe?
Rating:
Summary: Achieved Far Below Potential
Review: This book probably deserves a 3 star rating, but I had to penalize it one star because Michael Crichton is capable of so much better. On the positive side, I enjoy Crichton's books because I feel like I learn about cutting edge scientific information. In this respect, the book did not disappoint. The book included interesting information about both animal behavior and advanced technology. And the book was somewhat entertaining, in a "feel like I've just wasted my time" sort of way. Character development and dialogue, never strengths of the author's, became notable by their awkwardness and artificiality. As the book progressed, it read more and more like a movie script for an implausible, B-grade horror movie. I'm sure that most readers who have enjoyed Crichton's other books will feel disappointed by this effort. It is apparent that it was written with the movie potential in mind, and effort was not taken to make it into a good book first.
Rating:
Summary: Prey for a better novel
Review: The flaws in this novel are too numerous to mention but leave you wondering why you wasted your money. Crichton develops a story that draws on the subjects of nanotechnology, bioengineering, and family relationships. In the end he completely fails to engage the reader in any one of these areas. There are a few snippets of interesting facts regarding the science involved in these technologies. However, as the novel wears on there is less and less effort placed on transitioning between the fact and the fiction. The time spent describing the mundane details of the day to day life of a father was completely wasted. Crichton can't be a husband or a father in the real sense because his anicdotes are so far off it is rediculous. I got the distinct impression that Crichton got bored writing this novel about a third of the way into it. He seemed to be heading in a very intigueing direction, then he slapped together the rest of the book using little imagination or effort. I was looking for a great Crichton novel, and got far less. I feel duped, because I bought into the marketing and the hype. Stay away from this one if you want to maintain your passion for Crichton's greater works.
Rating:
Summary: Bug Problem Solved
Review: Couldn't the whole "problem" have been solved if the people had worn HazMat body suits? It seems totally improbable even to the layman that you would work with potentially dangerous organisms without protection! Maybe the characters in the novel should have read Crichton's ANDROMEDA STRAIN for tips.
Rating:
Summary: Beware, o ye, of the future
Review: Once again, Michael Crichton issues a foreboding caveat of our damnable future in his latest offering, Prey. This time around, his premonition originates from the burgeoning science of nanotechnology. Of course, as in all of Crichton's books, man's selfish pursuit for power, money, and fame consume his antagonists into an all-encompassing quest of self-indulgence. This undoubtedly leads to chaos and man's loss of control of this powerful, yet arcane, technology. Crichton being one of the few modern authors that I enjoy reading, I have enjoyed virtually all of his books. Prey, although a little less substantive than some of his other books, nonetheless proves to be a fun, entertaining, and thought-provoking book worth a look. Prey, if nothing else, is a page-turner that you will fly through enjoyably in a couple of days.
Rating:
Summary: Fun
Review: Others have spoken to the quality of the plot, so I'll just add a note about the science. Evolutionary computation, multi-agent systems, and evolutionary biology are all real fields. They've had nothing like the success Crichton grants them, but they are useful, interesting techniques, with a lot of future potential. Crichton did his homework pretty well, and the end result never says anything that's really, utterly wrong. A real accomplishment, that. I can't really speak to the quality of the nanotech in the book, but as far as I know, that's a bit farther in the future than the software side of things he references. FYI, I liked the book, but then, it's not every day I get to read a novel about my area of research, and find that it's not entirely wrong!
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