Michael Crichton's "Prey"

When I was working in Target a few years ago, Michael Crichton’s first book in a while came out — titled Prey — and I found myself wanting to read it but also fearing disappointment because Timeline hadn’t been that great and Michael had seemingly gone off the deep end with comments he was making in the media.

That was 2002.

Last week I got bored and while my girlfriend scanned my mom’s bookshelf for paperbacks to borrow, she came across a copy of Prey and I immediately snatched it up, saying I’d like to take a look at what Michael has offered us here.

Now, when I started reading the novel I knew two things – that the action in the novel would be interesting and that I would likely learn something or be inundated with technical information that can or may entirely bore me. What i hadn’t banked on was the book being predictable and that it was.

The novel starts out with a synopsis of what was going on 7 days after the book starts. “Things rarely turn out how you plan them” seems to be a fitting line that leads you into chapter one because this synopsis does not hold true at the end. Yet the little piece that Crichton threw in before section #1 (Home) that my interest was immediately piqued.

Crichton also departs from his normal formula by writing this novel in the first person which I found helpful to his cause because he can go off for entire chapters in technical details and lose vision on the story… Having Jack Forman, the main character, tell the story allowed Michael to mix in the action of the story with the technical information that was going to be told to the reader through the story. Everything is paced rather well in that fashion and the book is a page turner…

But…

I felt like I was reading something I had read before — not just that but things were predictable with allusions that Mike left. Maybe they were intended but when you tell me a virus helps you make something and that something is now running amok all on it’s own, it seems rather obvious that the virus has something to do with it as well as everything you suspect that you don’t find out until later.

I have already spoiled the book enough with that last paragraph… I don’t want to go into predictable stuff any more nor do I want to continue to spoil it for those who haven’t read the book yet (and there is probably a handful of you if not a bunch of those who have missed the book’s release).

It’s a page turner and it’s captivating… it may be Mike Crichton’s best pacing of a book but at the same time – it’s not his best book.