Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton
Originally published in 1991
4.5 🌟
I'm sure most of you who have seen the film (and who hasn't seen the film?) will be asking why they should read this book if they already know what happens. The book is different from the film! Both good and bad
The back of the book reads:
‘On a remote jungle island, genetic engineers have created a dinosaur game park.
An astonishing technique for recovering and cling dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now one of mankind’s most thrilling fantasies has come true and the first dinosaurs that the Earth has seen in the time of man emerge.
But there is a dark side to the fantasy. And after a catastrophe destroys the park’s defence systems, the scientists and tourists are left fighting for survival’
I loved this book and while reading it, it quickly became one of the best books I have read in a long time. It can be difficult to get through in places, particularly in places when there is a lot of information at once and it can be fact heavy but it is also filled with action.
Spoilers ahead!
The beginning of this book was slow with just under 100 pages of talking about the island and the discovery of an unknown animal that they later discover as a ‘compy’ though it is never revealed how they got off the island
While reading the book I got different impressions of the characters than when I had watched the films. Some characters who died in the film survived in the book and some who survived in the film died in the book.
One of the major changes I noticed while reading was that John Hammond was completely different, all he cared about was money and even after he knew the park was going wrong he was still thinking about how he could make it better on a different park. In the end he gets killed by Compys in the end
One of my favourite characters in the film Robert Muldoon is also very different in the book though he was still my favourite character. In the book he has a drinking problem and is often seen drunk or drinking. Unlike in the film, he wasn't killed by the velociraptors and instead survived.
Ian Malcolm was never one of my favourite characters in the film but I started to dislike him even more as I was reading the book. At the end of the book, he was supposedly dead, having died from the wound in his leg that he received from the T. Rex. However he was brought back for the sequel, having apparently survived
Overall this book was amazing and I rated it 4.5* and it would have been 5 stars if it hadn't been for the beginning. I recommend this to anyone who loves dinosaurs, loved the films or just wants an action packed read
