Jurassic Park: The Lost World

By Michael Crichton

[It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic

Park. Six years since the extraordinary dream of science

and imagination came to a crashing end - the dinosaurs

destroyed, the park dismantled, the island indefinitely

closed to the public.

Now there are rumours that something has survived...]

The second and last of the Jurassic Park novels and the worst out of the two unfortunately. It took a very, very long time to get into the action of it all and, in fact, was absolutely nothing like it's film counterpart except for one scene - the trailer over the cliff.

This scene was done particularly well, being very tense and so well-written. It's just a shame I didn't enjoy the whole book as much as the first one. Maybe it's because I'm not a huge fan of the second film which probably made me biased and doubtful for this book (thank God that awful T-Rex scene in the city was not included in the novel! How ridiculous was that scene?!)

Although it did have a slow start, the plot itself was pretty good. It certainly kept me intrigued and I love love love how Crichton was able to use so much detail about the dinosaurs, mathematics, animal behaviour and scientific theories as well as keeping it very action-packed!

I also quite liked Malcolm and Sarah's characters. Malcolm was still his usual self and Sarah's addition was welcomed with the loss of such great characters from the first one (however Grant and Ellie were briefly mentioned near the beginning which was nice!). The kids - Kelly and Arby - were cute and brought some innocence to the story. Levine, on the other hand, was irritating - although I think that was the idea! And of course Lewis Dodgson was also a character I didn't like, but that was to be expected as the anti-hero of the novel.

The conflict between the science companies and Malcolm/Sarah's team was definitely played up in the film version. It was more of a small team of three to four against one another in the novel as to the whole host Sarah's team is battling in the film. I feel this made the book have a more personal feel to it as the intentions were made clear in what each team wanted out of this illegal visit.

The ending was a little rushed and unrealistic to me (well, as unrealistic as a novel about dinosaurs can be) which ruined it a little bit. Like the first one, they got themselves into a lot of trouble but seemed to get themselves out of it too easily - yes plenty of characters died and a few injured, but I didn't really feel the protagonists lives were really at stake.

Still, well worth a read as the follow-up to the first one though!

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