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Summary: Operation PredPrey
Review: This book is about a man who is without a job, basically the house maid because his wife works for a major science company and has no time to take care of the home. His wife seems to be cheating on him, and avoiding him and the three kids they have. But one day his wife is in a car accident, and his point of view about her cheating on him is washed away. The next day he is sent to work in an isolated scientific labratory to try and stop the predprey that are expanding quickly and seeking destruction of the humans. meanwhile at a town hospital, john's wife is still recovering from the car crash. Can john survive/destroy the predprey before they multiply to much? Is his wife the secret of why the predprey are expanding? Find out in the new book Prey by Michael crichton!
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Summary: Page Turner
Review: I finished this book in 2 afternoons and would highly recommend it to anyone.
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Summary: Fun to read
Review: I got this book for Christmas and I thought I would be polite and read it. It wasn't like the usual books I read although it was packed full of technical information. The book was an easy read that brought you ever deeper into the story. I happen to be a 40 year old programmer which is who the book is about only I am single. The lead character isn't really a tech head because he came over from genetics and got into writting the agent technology. It was pretty interesting how they described how they developed the nano technology. It was pretty clever and I think that is the way that it will have to develop. I thought the characters were well thought out. I have met many character just like that at work on various projects. I don't know if it was forshadowing or what when the author named a charater Bobby Limbeck. It stuck in my head that name for a day or two until I remebered where I had heard it from. That was the character that Raymond Shaw shot in the dream sequence of the Manchurian Canidate. He was the guy everyone liked and they called him the mascot. I guess that was suppose to explain why Bobby was always acting like a chicken. I would like to see this one as a film because of thinking how they would create the swam and the action that happens in the magnet room. I would recommend this to anyone with a technical background that enjoys a good mystery.
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Summary: A fun read but not his best
Review: In Prey, Crichton uses primarily the same formula that he did in Jurassic Park and Timeline. Replace dinosaurs and Medieval horrors with nanoparticles, and you have Prey. That is not such a bad thing. All three of these novels will keep you up late at night trying to get to the resolution of some very exciting sequences. The resolution in Prey does seem a little flat though. The climax of prey is filled with as much intensity as any of his novels, but the denouement (falling action after the climax) is weak at best. When you hit the last page, you find yourself wondering why he would end the story at that moment. There is still a little left to be resolved. I was also a little put off by the main character. We are supposed to see him as being intellectual and yet some very obvious details and clues slip right past him. At times he is passive to the point of absurdity and other times he is a determined leader. Crichton's characters tend to be a little flat. He is usually more concerned with providing background details than he is with developing characters. Having said this, Prey is a fun read. Crichton's stories hold your attention, and like his books from the past, this once keeps you reading.
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Summary: Scary Stuff!!
Review: The more I read about the possibilities of the future, the more I embrace our past. Now it is nanotechnology which poses the threat and Michael Crichton has done with it as he has done with other similar themes, i.e. he makes terrible things sound reasonably possible. While I must admit this technology was not on my radar screen before I picked the book up, it surely is now and if you would like to spend some discomfiting time getting entertainingly educated, this is your opportunity.
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Summary: Promising Premise But Lame Ending
Review: The premise is promising--a secretive startup firm becomes the first company to manufacture commercial quanitites of simple nanobots that can perform a complex funtion as a swarm, and they get loose. However, the kind of havoc they wreak increasingly strains credibility, despite the author's repeated descriptions of the "emergent behavior" that a rapidly evolving swarm is capable of. The ending is so outrageously over-the-top that it reads like the script of an amateurish B movie. What a shame because Mr. Crichton could have concocted a less fantastic, but ultimately more deadly and interesting menace.
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Summary: Just Try to put it down!
Review: In the beginning, our narrator, Jack Forman, ominously reveals that "Things never turn out the way you think they will". Jack is a Bay Area high tech manager who has recently been fired, for exposing corruption in his company. His wife is in charge of a team that has been developing a kind of nano-spy plane. These nano-planes are intended to be a swarm of micro-robots that can fly to remote places and, acting in concert, send back a visual image. The team is using a piece of software that Jack wrote to control the swarms of nanoparticles, and hence when they get out of control he is called into the Nevada desert to try to help reign them in. As the battle rages, the nano-swarm begins to demonstrate what is referred to "emergent behavior", ie their tactics evolve. As the plot twists & turns, I found myself drawn in and glued to this book. While it may not be fine literature, it is a tremendously enjoyable read.
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Summary: He frowned. I said. Then I did. I said. You will frown.
Review: This is the first M.C. book I read. It was kind of fun, especialy liked the cliff-hanger parts on the end of the chapters. I almost expected a commercial after each.
Michael Crichton delivers a fun book, but not a very well written book. I frowned. She frowned. They frowned. GET IT!? If anyone is a Next Generation fan (Star Trek), you will be able to guess most of the book. Those crazy "Nanites", were able to do so much in such a little time. I kept expecting to see the Terminator 2 robot pop up somewhere in this book. Once again, just like alot of his work, scientific advances go haywire in a secret isolated environment. I read the book. I frowned. The ending is pure Hollywood.
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Summary: Couldn't Put it Down
Review: I stayed up late and got up early all week to finish reading this book. Just buy it.
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Summary: Crichton at his best
Review: This was a fantastic novel! It follows a structure very similar to "Sphere" (with characters you care just as much for) while focusing on a much more realistic scientific possibility. As a graduate computer science student, I appreciated the accuracy of Crichton's details when describing distributed intelligence. This book presents us with a haunting (and somehow inevitable) future.
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