Product Description

It is six years after the disaster at Jurassic Park and the park is closed, the island deserted, the dinosaurs are destroyed and the scientists' dream is ruined. But there are rumours that something has survived. Is the nightmare beginning again? Jurassic Park was one of the most popular books of recent years and a hugely-successful film directed by Steven Spielberg. The Lost World, the thrilling and long awaited sequel, is also a big Hollywood blockbuster. Michael Crichton has written several very successful books including Disclosure and Congo.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1895305 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 64 pages

From Amazon.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 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.

From Library Journal
When strange animal carcasses begin to wash up on the shores of Costa Rica, an eccentric paleontologist suspects that dinosaurs may exist somewhere in the area. This much-anticipated sequel to the megahit Jurassic Park (Knopf, 1990) reads more like a movie novelization: so bereft of plot and characterization in deference to action that it is closer in spirit to Steven Spielberg's movie version (1993) than to the entertaining and educational novel that preceded it. Reprising their roles from Jurassic Park are Ian Malcolm, who bought the farm courtesy of a T-rex in JP but whom Crichton seemingly couldn't resist resurrecting, and Lew Dodgson, the evil scientist who makes a living stealing ideas from his fellow researchers. Malcolm and Dodgson, leading separate parties, converge on a small Costa Rican island where the resident raptors, tyrannosaurs, and other carnivores make their field trip distinctly unpleasant. Despite its flaws, however, there will undoubtedly be huge demand in public libraries for Crichton's latest.
--Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.