Title Jurassic Park Author Michael Crichton Cover Art Chip Kidd Publisher Ballantine Books - 1993 First Printing Ballantine Books - 1990
	Title The Lost World Author Michael Crichton Cover Art Gregory Wenzel Publisher Ballantine Books - 1996 First Printing Ballantine Books - 1995
	Category Science Fiction Warnings Devoured humans Main Characters Malcom, Grant, Ellie, Gennaro, Hammond, Lex, Tim, Levine, Thorne, Arby, Kelly Main Elements Genetic engineering Website www.michaelcrichton.net

Jurassic Park

The Lost World

I'm a fan of Crichton's books, science fiction that is in big part based on current science just taken to it's extreme, exploring the consequences of scientific discovering without ethics to guide us. Such as Jurassic Park. Now it would be pretty darn cool to see a live dinosaur, until the T-Rex escapes his enclosure and runs rampant devouring the tourists. You could say the same about a lion, except the T-Rex is just a teeny, tiny bit bigger. While this isn't one of my favorite Crichton books I still enjoyed the read. Basically I just like the way he writes.

Now I was poking around a used bookstore and discovered The Lost World. I didn't even know that Jurassic Park had a sequel. While the ending of the first book seemed rather final, it was clear that there was room for another. However it isn't really about what happened after, it was really about what happened before. Obviously I don't want to say too much, it's part of the mystery. One thing you kind of have to just accept though is the miraculous recovery of Ian Malcolm, and the fact that he was crazy enough to go back and face the dinosaurs again. I found that part rather less than plausible, though I could understand the need to have at least one character the same between the two novels. I liked this one less than the first, most of Cricton's books are standalone and perhaps this one would have been best left that way. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't one of the best.