Review #199 // Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park #1) – Michael Crichton

Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1)

After finding a way to clone dinosaur DNA, John Hammond decides to create a park where people can witness these living fossils. For a price. Everything seems to be going fine, with minimal incidents … until something goes very, very wrong.


Why this book?: It’s been on my TBR for the longest time, mainly because I’m a huge fan of the movie. I finally found it in myself to read this book when I made a Down the TBR Hole where it was featured. If it was landing itself on one of those posts, then I needed to get reading.

Just as I mentioned above, I’m a huge fan of the original movie. I used to be terrified of it when I was little, but as I grew older I developed this fascination with it, and I found myself rewatching it at random times just to dissect the movie. When I found out it was a book, I was still early in my book obsession, so I placed it on my TBR for later…and never got back to it. But now that I finally have read it, I have to admit–if you loved the movie, you’ll probably love this book. And, at least for me, that’s an event that I can rarely indulge in.

While I say that if you liked the movie, you’ll like the book, I will also mention that the book is only like the movie in the most minimal way you can think of. Reading this book is like reading a different point of view of the same story. Some people experienced it this way, while others experienced it this way, and that’s how I view the differences between the movie and the book. The movie changes characters around, however, as well as change key characteristics of Grant, Hammond, and even Ellie. In the movie, there is the lawyer, Gennaro. In the book, he’s two separate characters, Gennaro and Ed Regis. Instead of Lex (the granddaughter) being the oldest, in the book she is the youngest, and the grandson, Tim, is the oldest. I personally thought that some of these changes from the book to movie were unnecessary, and I have to say that I enjoyed the characters in the book far more than the ones in the movie.

The writing in the book was clever and well-informed, but wasn’t boring to read or overflowing the information. Crichton placed enough information in front of you for you to understand, but if you didn’t know a lot about genetics then you weren’t going to be lost, because Crichton made sure to keep you in the loop. Crichton also liked to switch in-between characters, staying in a omniscient point of view that gave you all of the information, but still held enough back so surprises were still surprising and deaths were still shocking. And he really didn’t hold back with the deaths, while the movie director and producers obviously did!

I also read the audiobook of this, and loved the narration and how the narrator portrayed each character. It’s one of the many reasons why I love audiobooks, and will continue to read books in this way.

Final Rating: ★★★★☆

Overall?

I really enjoyed how different the book was from the movie, and couldn’t get enough of it. The characters were different, the setting was slightly different, and the way Crichton went about telling the story was perfect.

Would I Recommend?

Definitely! Especially if you enjoyed the movie, you’ll like this one. The only reason I didn’t give it five stars was because I wasn’t much blown away with anything–it was just enjoyable and I had a great time reading it.


Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1)

Additional Information:

Published: November 20th, 1990

Publisher: Knopf

Page Count: 400

Genre: Science Fiction/Thriller

Synopsis: via Goodreads

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. . . .


- Avery (2)

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3 thoughts on “Review #199 // Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park #1) – Michael Crichton

  1. I didn’t even know this was a book but now that I know, I have to read it! I love the movie (singular, yes, because the sequels were… meh). That’s really interesting that they made some changes between the book and the movie that seemed unnecessary. One of my sort of pet projects is looking at the differences and figuring out why those choices were made. It’s the scientist in me, I suppose 🙂 Lovely review, Avery!

    Laura @BlueEyeBooks