Customer Reviews

The Lost World

5 star:		(255)
4 star:		(139)
3 star:		(77)
2 star:		(44)
1 star:		(65)

 

 

So far, my favorite book is "The Lost World", despite some of it's obvious flaws. Such would include the large number of inconsistancies between Jurrassic Park and this sequel, and obviously the only reason Crichton wrote this was because Universal wanted a sequel for Jurassic Park, but these are easily forgiven over the quality of the work. As opposed to the first Jurassic Park, Crichton takes much more time in his visual descriptions of the actions in this novel, giving a better sense of the passage of time. One would notice that this book is noticably longer than the first. Crichton, like usual, is a master of educating his readers while entertaining them, better than many writers. Of course, one has to mention the often frightening edge-of-your-seat suspence that makes this novel impossible to put down. If you read this book and find yourself still craving knowledge and dinosaur action, I would suggest the novel "Raptor Red" by Robert T. Bakker. This book is also extreemly informative as well as action-packed, however it does not have the real scary edge of The Lost World or Jurassic Park. On the other hand, it is written from the Raptor's perspective, and is a real interesting twist on normal dino stories.

I don't know if the dinosaurs bring out the best in Crichton or what. I've read a few of his books and haven't really cared for them, but I loved Jurassic Park and I really enjoyed this one too. It's a rollicking adventure story that doesn't stop very often. When it does, though, with some long scientific asides, it stops dead.

Crichton sure is capable of writing an exciting tale. I wish he'd do it more often. Lost World has many exciting sequences as various dinosaurs (mostly Tyrannosaurus and Raptors) chase the humans all around the island. The action is breathtaking as, just when you think the humans have solved their problem (or at least are on the road to solving it), things take a turn for the worse. I am not one for hyperbole, but throughout the middle of the book, I couldn't put it down. I stayed up much later than I should, and only turned out the light because it was getting too late and I still had too far to go.

This really isn't much more than an action yarn with some scientific ideas attached to it, though, so don't get the idea that it's really deep. In fact, the scientific ideas are one of the problems with the book. I'm not saying they're not accurate, as I don't know enough about them to make that judgment. However, there are times where Crichton just stops the action dead to go on for a page or two about chaos theory, evolution, or something. These are interesting, but they completely destroy the mood of the book. It's almost like mixing chocolate and shrimp: sure, some people may like it, but for the rest of us who like both but hate them together, it makes the finished product just a little less palatable. Thankfully, the asides don't come at you too much at one time, so once each one stops the ball starts rolling again.

Being an action thriller, the characters aren't that complex. They seem like it at times (such as when they're spouting scientific theories), but they aren't really. Malcolm is scarred by the events in the first book, and there's an interesting sequence where this comes into play. Thankfully for himself and for the others, he snaps out of it fairly quickly. I liked his character, though, because he's a combination of a realist and a cynic. However, he uses his scientific knowledge and his intelligence to get them out of more than one scrape. He's probably the most broadly defined of the bunch. The other members of the expedition have their character hooks too, but they aren't that deeply explored. Crichton spends a lot of time detailing their background, but when events start happening, they're more fodder for these events than anything else. They are distinctive, they just aren't complex.

The villains of the piece, though, are pretty dull and stereotypical. Dodgson is your typical greedy and lazy villain. His specialty is stealing other people's research after it's been tested, because that's easier and more lucrative than doing your own research and possibly going down numerous blind alleys. His allies are the typical nervous bunch, with one person worried that they're doing the wrong thing and the other one worried that they're doing the right thing but that it will go horribly wrong (which it inevitably does). Thankfully, once they get events rolling to their inevitable conclusion, they're pretty much sidelined and we don't hear much about them again until the end.

The plot is kind of a runaround, but I really enjoyed it despite that. There are definitely predictable events in it, such as when a character does something and you know immediately what the consequences of that action are going to be, long before any of the characters do. That does mar things a little bit. But it's easy to look past them because Crichton writes the action so effectively. When characters aren't spouting scientific stuff, I almost held my breath as events happened. Especially effective is the trailer scene, where Malcolm and Sarah have to figure out how to get safely out of a trailer that's being pushed, prodded and smashed by two enraged Tyrannosaurs. It's hard to tell what's going to happen there, or who will survive this sequence. Nobody (with the possible exception of Malcolm) is safe in this book, so there is a lot of tension. I will say that not everybody dies, but there certainly is doubt when certain people are in danger.

I wish Crichton would write more like these. To me, he seems at his best when he's writing scientific action thrillers. I wish there were a way that he could limit the scientific asides, though, as they really slow things down. I don't mind the asides themselves, but I think they could be included better. Still, this is one book that you won't be able to put down. And it has dinosaurs eating people. What could be wrong with that?

I'm quite skeptical about sequels, especially when the first was simply so clever. I could never have expected The Lost World to be so much different, and yet every bit as good as its predecessor. Perhaps one my favorite aspects of this book is that Crichton takes a risk (which is quite renowned for now) and offers an entirely new breed of dinosaur toward the end, the Chameleon-Raptor mix. The moment I begin to see this being, I envisioned one of the most devastating beasts the World would have ever known. I wish there had been more dealing with this creature throughout the adventure, but I was pleased to see Crichton back off the complex, realistic style he's so fond of and side track down a more creative, "what if" path. This book is not JP and it doesn't read like JP did, but I consider it worth every dime that JP was.

1.) This is an okay book, neither as good as it's fans claim, nor as bad as its detractors say.

2.)It is, however, a lousy sequel to "Jurassic Park"; for one thing, it does not follow the obvious plotline Crichton set out at the end of "Jurassic Park" (the dinosaurs escaping to the jungle) for the planned sequel. For another, contrary to what Crichton claims at the beginning of this book, which claim is defended by his obsequious fans among the reviewers, Ian Malcolm was quite thoroughly dead at the end of "Jurassic Park", sufficiently much so that it rated a comment which I quote: "They (the Costa Rican government) did not even permit the burial of Hammond or Ian Malcolm." If the story had been told in the first person, and this comment had come from the mouth of a fallible character, Crichton's claim in "Lost World" that rumors of Malcolm's death had been erroneous would have been plausible. But the story was told in the third person, omniscient narrator style; that quote came from the mouth of the author, and can not, therefore, be set aside so easily. Yet here in "The Lost World", that is exactly what Crichton tries to do: he claims that rumors of Malcolm's death were greatly exaggerated.

3.) Why does he do this? It's pretty obvious, actually, and I'm astounded that none of the other 400+ reviewers here seem to have figured it out. It has nothing to do with needing to bring him back to make the book match the movie sequel; nothing else in the book matched the movie, so what makes anyone think that Crichton or the producers would care if that detail was different? No, it has to do with the fact that if Malcolm isn't available, Crichton doesn't have anyone handy to spout chaos theory, and he neither wants to leave out his pet psuedoscience, nor create a brand-new chaotician character to act as his mouthpiece. Understandable, but not really forgivable; if he needed to keep Malcolm alive for the sequel, he shouldn't have killed him off in the first place. Very careless.

4.) One of the weakest points in the plot is the fact that I find it extremely implausible that Malcolm would even CONSIDER going anywhere near the island once the suggestion was made that there might, again, be dinosaurs on it. After what he'd been through in "Jurassic Park", and given what we know of his character, it seems highly out of character for him to so readily join the expedition. There should at least have been serious soul-searching, or a more pressing reason for him to go. As it was, he seemed almost eager: 'Oh, the dinosaurs may not all be dead after all? Well, in that case count me in!' Just not at all in character, but then again, see comment #3; Crichton needed him to be there, so he was there. Never mind what the character would really do.

5.) There is almost NOTHING in common between the novel, "Lost World", and the movie, "The Lost World". There are two characters in common, plus one character in the movie who is sort of a pastiche of two of the characters in the book (Thorne and Eddie are sort of combined into one), and I think there was one scene that was similar; I don't remember the movie well enough to be certain. But seriously, that's IT. I've never seen a movie have less in common with the book it's named after (I won't even say 'based on', 'cause it really WASN'T!).

All in all, a tolerably good action-adventure novel, but don't expect it to follow logically from "Jurassic Park", or to bear any resemblance to the movie version.

I've just re-read The Lost World back-to-back with Jurassic Park, and the sequel suffers somewhat by comparison. It's a lot bleaker than the movie version, with a smaller, less hospitable island, and the creatures wasting away from prion diseases (mad dino disease!) The T-Rexes display proper Spielbergian family values, but the raptors (and others?) seem to be afflicted with terminal behavioural problems; the outlook for them is not good. Where The Lost World loses out, compared to the first story, is in the plot and the human action. In Jurassic Park there was a terrific buildup and a scramble for survival, truly compelling stuff; in the sequel, we have a sort of field trip/rescue operation which only occasionally gains momentum. That said, there is plenty of food for thought, with Ian Malcolm & Co never at a loss for a theory or three concerning extinctions. Some people have said that Arby and Kelly add nothing to the story and might as well not be in it at all; I say that at least they're smart and sensible (unlike poor Lex in Jurassic Park, who has some of the dumbest lines ever printed.) So to sum up, not bad but lacks the bite of the original.

I read this book about a year and a half ago, well before the movie came out. I absolutely loved the original Jurassic Park and it ranks as one of my most favorite books. But frankly, some stories just don't need sequels. Jurassic park is one of those stories. "The Lost World" gives me the impression of a forced sequel that was only done for the sake of having a sequel (in other words for the money). "The Lost World" makes up situations that were clearly not true by the first book. The most obvious is the island. In Jurassic Park, it was clear that Isle Nublar was the only island possessed by INGEN, but in The Lost World another island magically appears which was also used by the company. Also, as many other readers have noted, Malcolm was clearly killed off in the first book, while somehow he comes back to life to be the main character in The Lost World. As it tries to force these situations to work, it also reuses the situations present in Jurassic Park. If you have read Jurassic Park then you will find this book annoying. If you haven't read JP then you may enjoy this book. But if you haven't read either then I would go with Jurassic Park. It is a lot more logical than this book.

Michael Crichton came up a winner with "Jurassic Park". Who doesn't love dinosaurs? So when you hit a winning ticket, you exploit it for all you're worth, right? Well, yes and no. Crichton had a good idea for a sequel but he doesn't do it the justice it deserved. There was no reason to bring Malcolm back; his turning up alive after being pronounced dead was just plain lame. I suspect Crichton was tired of Grant/Sattler and wanted to go with a new team. But the idea of a secret island where the real work of Jurassic Park was carried out is pretty good; after Jurassic Park was abandoned, what became of all those leftover critters? Malcolm's new team proposes to go in and find out. As usual, the dinosaurs save the book; the plot is contrived in spots; the characterizations, except for the two youngsters, Arby and Kelly, are flat and uninteresting for the most part, but the dinosaurs fascinate us by just being dinosaurs. Especially compelling is Crichton's description of the raptor pack which has grown to young adulthood without adult modeling; bred from a test tube, they had no parents to provide an example for social existence, and the result, as Crichton shows us, is a pack of unsocialized predators living in a world in which only the strongest and most vicious survived and all the others died. In such a world, nothing is going to survive very long; once they've eaten all their prey, they'll turn around and eat each other. The writing in general has a somewhat hurried quality, as if Crichton just wanted to bang this sequel out and get it over with before moving on to something else. But even with its flaws, Crichton still knows how to engage the reader's attention. "The Lost World" doesn't measure up to its predecessor by a long shot, but it's still a pretty good read.

"The Lost World" was much better on paper than it was on film. The film took a great deal of liberties with the story, going as far as adding entirely new characters and plotlines as well as borrowing from "Jurassic Park" to move the story along. This review, however, is of Michael Crichton's wonderful book and not the film loosely based on it.

I'm one of those people who usually sees a film before I read the book it is based on. With the "Jurassic Park" flicks, I really enjoyed the first one and hated the second one. With this in mind I was hesitant to pick up either of Crichton's dino books. After reading "Jurassic Park" though, I found that not only was the story different, it was much better. That made me wonder if "The Lost World" would do the same. As expected, "The Lost World" did not let me down. It was almost entirely different from the film. The primary plot of this story is that one Richard Levine is curious to find out if a "lost world" actually exists. He has been researching odd animal findings in and around Costa Rica and believes that somehow a few dinosaurs actually survived extinction. Not knowing about John Hammond's business venture in building a dinosaur park where dinos actually exist, he picks the brain of Dr. Ian Malcolm in hopes to convince him to help him seek out this "lost world." Of course, Malcolm is the wonderfully cynical mathematician from "Jurassic Park." He was thought to be dead but through the wonders of the written word, Crichton revives him. As Levine presses Malcolm for help, he eventually decides to go it alone and ends up trapped on Isla Sorna, also known as Site B. At this point the story drops (for the most part) all arguments over evolution and extinction and becomes a rescue mission. Malcolm, along with the likeable Dr. Thorne, the headstrong Dr. Harding, field technician Eddie Carr and two very intelligent stowaways, sets out to save Levine's life and hopefully protect the secrets of Site B.

Of course, no Crichton novel is worth a dime without a decent villain. In this case, we revisit BioSyn's Lewis Dodgson, the catalyst for most of the chaos in the first book. He, along with two counterparts, sets out to collect a few eggs from Site B for his own gain. Dodgson is sinister, calculating and very sure of himself. I'll let you find out for yourself just how much of a problem he becomes in the "lost world."

As in "Jurassic Park," Crichton often goes off on long scientific tangents explaining the habits of lions and jackals in Africa. He also gives drawn out explanations on why or why not the dinosaurs were wiped out by asteroids. But just like in his first dino book, Crichton pours out this information in a way that, to me, doesn't bring the action to a screeching halt. I enjoy reading these little tidbits of scientific information, but I can see where others might find them to be a bit too much info to take in while your being attacked by velociraptors.

Many reviewers find this book to be subpar. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that it is a sequel. Sure, Malcolm shouldn't be back in action, but he's such a fun character that I'm willing to let Crichton slide here. I'll also concede that doctors Harding and Thorne closely resemble Grant and Sattler from the first book. I'll also admit that the two kids are nothing more than a rehash of Hammond's grandchildren. However, Crichton puts a very good spin on an old tale with "The Lost World." In my opinion it moves at a much faster pace than its predecessor. Although the characters aren't very well developed, we are given enough information to care about or hate most of them. Also, there are quite a few differences between the actions and even the biological makeup of many of the dinos in this book and "Jurassic Park," but these differences do help to move the book along.

"The Lost World" isn't a perfect book. It revisits old territory but still manages to give the reader a lesson or two about extinction and chaos theory. I give it five stars because it works wonderfully as an action yarn and it's nice to catch up with one of my favorite characters, Ian Malcolm.

Highly recommended.

I've just finished this and its a good read. Not Crichton's best by any means, but nonetheless a good book. I like the way that it links with Jurassic Park but actually uses a different set of characters (apart from Ian Malcolm). It did annoy me a bit that Malcolm was in the novel since he was supposed to have died in the last one. I also felt it unnecessary to include more kids for the sake of it. Also, the story was a bit one-dimensional compared to Jurassic Park, and it didn't have quite the same bang. A bit like comparing Hollywood with the Welsh Film Industry...

Anyway, what I will say is that I don't like the accusations about Crichton writing this for commercial value because the film was released at the same time. Firstly, the set of characters is almost completely different. Secondly, the plot is also very different. This isn't Jurassic Park, it's not Sphere, its not even Timeline. But nonetheless, its still worth reading if you're a Crichton fan, especially if you liked the first book. But, as other reviewers have stated, it wasn't really a needed sequel, neither did it match up to the first book. The only real reason I gave it four is because it was entertaining enough.

Before I picked up The Lost World, I had just finished reading "Jurassic Park" & watched the movie 'Jurassic Park'. I decided to come read the reviews that other reviewers had left before I finally decided to read "The Lost World". I was unsure if I would like it or not, some people loved the sequel and some seemed to hate it. Unfortunatly after I have read Lost World, I am still unsure if I like it or not.

I dislike it as a sequel for lots of reasons. First the reason that everyone claims is that Ian Malcom doesn't make it in the first book, and here he is in this book, a central character. Secondly, in Jurassic Park (JP), Ian was a 'mathematician', and I don't remember when he decided to become a 'palentologist', because he suddenly had an incredibly extensive knowledge of dinosaurs -- even ones he didn't encounter in JP. Thirdly, I was darn sick of Malcom in Lost World because he harps on and on and on about science and how scientists are bad and how they are changing the world, even more than he does in JP. After reading both books, I don't want to deal with Ian Malcom anymore. I also hate how Chrichton eats his words about dinosaurs. In JP I remember a scene that Grant is holding Lex very still and the big Tyrannasaur doesn't see them because they are not moving. In Lost World, that theory isn't good enough anymore and someone dies by doing the same thing (a bad guy, so I suppose Chrichton thinks it's okay). He tries to gloss it over, and this dissapointed me. Finally, the cast of dinosaurs wasn't that different. Most of the interaction is with 'T-Rex', raptors and 'compys'.

The book isn't terrible, however. I found myself reading it and enjoying it even after I disliked the Malcom beginning. This may have been because of the part about dinosaurs that I am interested in more -- the extinction. There is a lot of talk about the extinction of the dinosaurs. Chrichton tries to stretch your imagination and come up with a theory that is different than most of the theories out there about why the dinosaurs died. I liked the descriptions of behavior of the animals, which is the main focus of the book. I thought that the addition of a character who was knowledgeable in 'dangerous animal' behavior was good (Sarah Harding). The kids were definatly less annoying than the last book.

So, my advice -- read it to find out if you will like it or hate it. I still can't decide.