A book evoking a plethora of childhood memories. With the nostalgic magic of the Jurassic Park movies lingering in the background, your reviewer started this novel with glee. True to expectations, the mystery of Isla Nublar – the island inhabiting genetically resurrected dinosaurs – slowly unfolded. Crichton is adept at teasing you with details and changing a children’s story into an object of terror. Between beautiful descriptions of dinosaurs and haunting details of their ferocity it is easy to lose yourself in a childlike wanderlust. However Crichton manages to snap you out of this trance almost every time. With an absolutely sickening amount of references to how raptors are ‘birdlike’, with their heads moving ‘like birds’, their bodies poised ‘like birds’, Crichton belabours every simple adjective he can think of in an attempt to let the reader understand the dinosaurs. Combined with a non-existent branch on basic philosophy and mathematics, a useless character in the interminably-complaining young girl, and a complete lack of character development for anyone, Crichton turns a tale full of life and colour into a festering, shallow, tepid pool of disinterest.