Tag Archives: michael crichton

A short review of Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton

April 5th, 2010

Make no mistake, Crichton’s posthumously published Pirate Latitudes is an adventure book. This book has everything you’d expect in a pirate adventure; pirates, warships, KRAKEN!, cannons, lewd women, drunken brawls, and hurricanes. However it still manages to lack a certain sense of wonder or tension.

This may perhaps be because of popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean and the harsh edge of a good pirate story worn down through comedy relief. A pirate story filled with peril isn’t one that you generally sweat over any more. Perhaps if this book was published in the 1950s it would be much more exciting – but in today’s market (at least in this reader’s imagination) the pirate story has been worn down to the nub.

This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it because Pirate Latitudes has its moments. While Crichton has written about voyages on the sea in the past (the most notable of which comes to mind is in Eaters of the Dead and perhaps the young T-Rex’s chase near the waterfalls in Jurassic Park) he certainly didn’t get to go into as much detail as he was able to with Pirate Latitudes. You get the sense that these men really felt much more at home on the sea than they did on land. They were their own society, as it is put in the book, with their own rules, their own code and their own objectives. They knew their craft (one of the characters being called a sea artist) and knew their seas. In this sense Pirate Latitudes was a fun read and I even found myself wishing that Crichton found a way to put even more of the nitty gritty sailing details into the book.

Unlike Prey, this story ended pretty strong and I would actually recommend reading it if you like a good pirate story.

Here are more of my reviews of books by Michael Crichton.

A short review of Prey by Michael Crichton

October 28th, 2009

Prey by Michael Crichton

I recently finished reading Prey by Michael Crichton. I’m a big Crichton fan for nearly no other reason than because my first book that I ever read, on my own without the nagging of any teachers or parents, was Jurassic Park. That and he knows how to write a book that makes you want to keep reading until the end.

Prey was disappointing in a few ways. It was a page turner but only because I had the feeling that it was going to end well and make up for the lack of meat in the middle of the book. It was one of those stories where you hoped the ending would make it worth reading. The ending wasn’t horrible but it left you with a sense that Crichton really didn’t know how to end the story. Stories that you want to be over are never good stories.

Crichton seems motived to write by his opinions on matters of economy, technology, or politics. Which is fine – any reason to write is a good reason – but if you can’t wrap a good enough story around an opinion then all you are left with is an opinion – and everyone has those.

At the end of the day Prey is decent book to read but you will never tell anyone else to go pick up the book and read it. Which is why I’m not telling you to do that. I suggest picking up one of Crichton’s classics instead like The Adromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Congo (horrible movie, great book), The Terminal Man, or Sphere.

Michael Crichton, 66, dies of cancer

November 5th, 2008

Well, this sucks.

I’ve only written about Michael Crichton, or his work, a few times – but let me be the first to say that I am a huge fan of everything he had done professionally.  When Kyle linked me to this article I admit that I was immediately saddened by the news.

Michael Crichton was far and away, and for better or worse, my favorite author. I have my reasons. And I’m really quite sad that I will not be able to enjoy more of his work.

Source: Family: Michael Crichton dies of cancer.

A short review of Airframe by Michael Crichton

October 17th, 2008

I have always enjoyed Michael Crichton’s writing style. He tends to write in blocks of thoughts and actions, uses new lines to emphasize something that the character feels is important, and jams just enough raw data into his books to make them real, but not enough to turn off most readers.

Airframe was written very much in this same Michael Crichton style – though that may be the only reason I was entertained by the book.

Airframe’s story is centered around Casey Singleton, an employee of an aircraft manufacturer, who finds herself with about one week to figure out what happened on a flight that killed a few people and injured many. The story has a few twists, like most good stories do, in that Singleton is being setup by her bosses to take a fall for the company, that the company itself has had a track record of problems with the plane that aren’t easily explained in a single sentence, and a popular TV-news program is about to run a story on her company’s “deathtrap” of a plane.

Airframe is captivating, no doubt.  Again, because I like the way Crichton moves through stories I was able to read this book with ease and without let up. It was never a chore.  But when I was finished with the story it didn’t make me want to start again.

If you’re a Crichton fan, I suggest giving this a read – preferably when you are on a plane, as I was when I began reading this book. It makes the story a little more fun.

A short review of State of Fear by Michael Crichton

October 6th, 2008

Even though I read State of Fear a few months ago, I thought I’d jot down my overall thoughts of the book. As you might notice, I read nearly all of Crichton’s works, so even though the subject matter for this book isn’t particularly interesting to me, I read it because Crichton wrote it.

I’m a sheep, I know.

State of Fear is a story about the environment and the effect Global Warming is, or is not, having on it in the world around us. Is is also about a lawyer trying to pull all of the pieces together, along with a cast of other characters, of a plot to wreak some environmental havoc just as an environmental group is trying to score some dough for their work.

There is more to it, of course, like the whole ideal jousting about the environment and about whether or not Global Warming is a real threat, caused by humans or not, and even if it is having an effect on the planet as we speak.

An interesting way for an acclaimed author to get the information out there and into the hands of his readers without, perhaps, writing a work of non-fiction.

It is also hard to see where Crichton sits on this issue. Frankly, I do not care. Which is why I think he chose to keep it as vague and balanced as it appears to be by this uninformed environmental novice. It really seems like a report on the facts wrapped in an action-packed adventure.

Which is why, I believe, State of Fear will never become a movie. It would be very hard to strike this same balance with a movie. Everything would be critiqued. The Director’s opinions, the actor’s, the screenwriter’s, etc. Everyone that worked on the movie would have a play for the tilt.

Either way I applaud Crichton for keeping my attention long enough to give me all of the facts about Global Warming.  I’ll bet it was a challenge.