The Lost World

Features

• Cover Type: Mass Market Paperback with 448 pages
• Published by: Ballantine Books September 1, 1996
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 034540288X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0345402882
• Book Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Weighs: 7.2 ounces

Product Review
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 Hughes

From Publishers Weekly
One 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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Lost World (Hardcover) 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.