The Lost World: Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Title: The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Author: Michael Crichton

Publisher: Arrow Books

Release Date: 1995

Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Sci-fi

Summary:

Five years have passed since the disaster at Jurassic Park, and despite the authorities best efforts to keep the islands dangerous inhabitants existence a secret; a gingerbread trail of dinosaur remains are washing up on nearby beaches. Soon enough it attracts unwanted attention from both the good and the bad.

Ian Malcolm is soon back on the island to rescue his friend who has become an unwitting victim of the islands' allure despite still holding both emotional and physical scares from his previous visit. Can he survive a second time or is his time up?

Review: 

So I absolutely loved the first Jurassic Park book (my review of which can be found here) and after reading some lukewarm reviews for the second book, I decided to give it a shot going on the merit of the one I had read previously.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park is by no means as good as the first book. The plot is not as engaging or innovative as its predecessor but it is still nonetheless a good read which any dinosaur, science fiction or thriller fan will love and enjoy.

In terms of the series as a whole, the book does not add anything substantial to what we already know about InGen and their creations, which makes it just a bit more boring to read. Similarly, I found it quite hard to get into and I found that it only really got interesting about halfway through. 

Only one character from the first book, Ian Malcolm, returns in this installment which I think worked quite well. Seeing as he held the most scars from the original Jurassic Park, and we were left not knowing whether or not he had survived, it provided a nice dilemma in the plot; whether or not he would go back on the island to resue his colleague and whether he would be lucky enough to survive a second time. I do not think it would have worked that well if all of the characters were completely new to the island - at least Malcolm could act as a tour guide!

For those that have seen the film, they made the film quite similar to the book but the film has much more action!

Rating: 6/10. If you enjoyed the first, you might aswell read the second!

You can buy The Lost World: Jurassic Park from Amazon here.