Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Goodreads Synopsis: An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price.

Until something goes wrong. . . .

In Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton taps all his mesmerizing talent and scientific brilliance to create his most electrifying technothriller.

My Rating: 3 stars.

Content warnings: R. Swearing, lots of violence, and characters being torn apart, one of which is an infant.

(spoilers below)

Thoughts: I described it to a friend before finishing as "both super solid and mind numbingly stupid." And I think that still stands. The science and technobabble was actually kinda interesting. Usually I just skim that kind of stuff, but I thought the explanation for how the dinosaurs were cloned was worth reading.

But some of the more plot-related things made me want to bash my head against a wall. I get wanting to protect the dinos, and thinking the technology was infallible. To a point. But there got to be a point someone involved in the project has got to have common sense. Sure you have as little personnel as possible, but there's still a lot of people there. I remember the moment, (when it was said that management wouldn't allow one dilophosaurus to be killed in order to conduct an autopsy to protect others from their venom) that it got to be too much for me. The park was literally designed as a tourist attraction in order to make money. I think most people would realize it'd be worth the sacrifice of one artificially created dino to keep the rest of them from hurting/killing tourists, and likely resulting in a highly expensive lawsuit. Potentially even being forced to close the park. It's just unbelievable someone could be that dumb.

Then again Hammond didn't exactly strike me as the brightest bulb ever. But he definitely had others who were supposed to be "smart" helping him get the place going.

Anyway.

Once it got going it held my attention. Not that I really cared for most what happened. The characters were meh, and the plot felt more like "ooh, this should happen now, that'd be bad" versus an actual progression of cause and consequences. But it was fun for the sake of the dinosaurs, and all the speculation, not only from the book, but that I personally wandered into as a result of it.

It also touched on some interesting elements of playing god and perceived infallibility. I think it could have done those themes better, but I appreciate their inclusion nonetheless.

In general it was interesting but not fantastic. A pretty standard thriller, just with dinosaurs instead of crime rings or anything else. Which lent it a little more interest in the long run. They almost won it another star, but the imbecility of everyone else took that away again. But if you've got some time and like dinosaurs it might be worth a look through.