.com Written in the wake of Jurassic Park's phenomenal box-office success, The Lost World seems as much a guidebook for Hollywood types hard at work on the franchise's followup as it is a legitimate sci-fi thriller. Which begs the inevitable questions: Is the plot a rehash of the first book? Sure it is, with the action unfolding on yet another secluded island, the mysterious "Site B." Is the cast of characters basically the same? Absolutely, from a freshly minted pair of cute, compu-savvy kids right down to the neatly exhumed chaos theorist Ian Malcolm (who was presumed dead at the close of JP). But is it fun to read? You betcha. Hollywood (and Michael Crichton) keeps telling us the same old stories for a very good reason: we like them. And the pulp SF formula Crichton has mastered with Jurassic Park and The Lost World is no exception. --Paul HughesFrom Publishers WeeklyOne fact about this sequel to Jurassic Park stands out above all: it follows a book that, with spinoffs, including the movie, proved to be the most profitable literary venture ever. So where does the author of a near billion-dollar novel sit? Squarely on the shoulders of his own past work?and Arthur Conan Doyle's. Crichton has borrowed from Conan Doyle before?Rising Sun was Holmes and Watson in Japan?but never so brazenly. The title itself here, the same as that of Conan Doyle's yarn about an equatorial plateau rife with dinos, acknowledges the debt. More enervating are Crichton's self-borrowings: the plot line of this novel reads like an outtake from JP. Instead of bringing his dinos to a city, for instance, Crichton keeps them in the Costa Rican jungle, on an offshore island that was the secret breeding ground for the beasts. Only chaos theoretician Ian Malcolm, among the earlier principals, returns to explore this Lost World, six years after the events of JP; but once again, there's a dynamic paleontologist, a pretty female scientist and two cute kids, boy and girl?the latter even saves the day through clever hacking, just as in JP. Despite stiff prose and brittle characters, Chrichton can still conjure unparalleled dino terror, although the wonder is gone and the attacks are predictable, the pacing perfunctory. But his heart now seems to be not so much in the storytelling as in pedagogy: from start to finish, the novel aims to illustrate Crichton's ideas about extinction?basically, that it occurs because of behavioral rather than environmental changes?and reads like a scientific fable, with pages of theory balancing the hectic action. As science writing, it's a lucid, provocative undertaking; but as an adventure and original entertainment, even though it will sell through the roof, it seems that Crichton has laid a big dinosaur egg. 2,000,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB main selection. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.From Library Journalabridgment of Crichton's latest novel, a sequel of sorts to the best-selling Jurassic Park (Knopf, 1990). Ian Malcolm, who supposedly died at the end of Jurassic Park, nonetheless returns to the islands off Costa Rica with a new crew to search for lost worlds of dinosaurs and investigate several theories of extinction. Unfortunately, The Lost World comes up short compared to the intrigue that the extraction, repair, and replication of dinosaur DNA generated for readers and listeners in Jurassic Park. Instead, The Lost World consists mostly of more dinosaurs that chase and sometimes capture Malcolm's cohorts or members of a rival gang led by an unscrupulous genetic engineer, Lew Dodgson. Dodgson would love to steal a few dinosaur eggs as part of a scheme to hatch the perfect laboratory animal ("If they're extinct, then they can't have any rights," Dodgson observes). Recommended.Cliff Glaviano, Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OhioCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. what is the best website to download books for free The Lost World: A Novel (Jurassic Park)
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Dinosaurs and a lost world.By Ray WalkerA very engaging bit of fiction. it held my interest right to the end. the story is based on the idea tha in a very remote part of the there was a very highly elevated jungle that was almost impossible to get to. in London one scientist claimed to have achieved the apparently impossible feat of getting there and discovering dinosaurs, petrodactls, etc., but when he left with photos a rver accident destroyed them. his fellow scientists called him a fake. the guts of the book relates both he and one of hi accusers, along with a news reporter and a known spotsman with rifles and ammo, returning[ and then all hell breaks loose.this was written in the 19th century before we learned the fate of dinosaurs 65 million yrs ago. the story is well wriiten anf wiill keep intrerested to the end.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Crichton clones his first bookBy Spenser CalderinThere are some interesting thoughts in this second book and one or two new characters including a stronger female but mostly it is just a retelling of book one. Even the new characters are refinements of old ones. You still have two engineers, a mathematician, a paleontologist, a life scientist, two greedy people and two kids. You still have the same dinos and dino villains. The only new thoughts are on theory and even those are just extensions of ideas in the first book. If that does not bother you, read away, there are some moments of interest.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Better than the movie!By -BranLike the Jurassic Park novel, The Lost World is so much better than the film adaptation Spielberg did. Not only are there more characters, the characters are much more diverse than what you see in the film. You also see the involvement of a dinosaur we've never seen in the movies. It's a shame they were left out.Aspiring scientists may have to read this with an open mind due to its dating(it's an older book and the setting is early 90s on an island not touched since the 80s). However, this should be done with any modern fictional story. Readers who enjoy nonstop action will love it!Like the previous entry in the series, the editors didn't do a very good job proofreading the story. Numerous spelling errors plague the book as well as words that seem to just be thrown in the middle of a sentence out of nowhere. It doesn't stop it from being a solid 4 star read though if you can overlook them.