Micro By Michael Crichton and Richard Preston Smoothie Review
In 2007, we had a great loss. One of the world’s best science fiction writers, Michael Crichton died. But right after his death rumors swirled. Works were found on his computer. One was Pirate Latitudes. The other was a unfinished work, that the press refused to reveal any news about it for the longest while. Then out of nowhere, this work appears again. It is called Micro and was finished by Richard Preston, who wrote the “Hot Zone” which proves they found someone knowledgeable in at least one area of science.
So now you’re asking what is it about? It is about seven college students. Many who are experts in environmental sorts of science. One is a expert on spiders. Another studies plants and what not. Despite their somewhat typical portrayals, they are geniuses one way or another. And they are offered a job, at a secretive yet high income research place called Nanigen. But as they began to take off Peter, one of the college students, finds that his brother Eric who works at Nanigen dies under mysterious consequences. So as the students are excited about the new job. Peter uncovers the clue to his brother death. He finds that Nanigen is at fault.
Nanigen is revealed as a place finding and discovering natural resources that are too tiny to study. These include protozoan, fungi, resika and what not. They shrink people with machine like environment to go out into the rain forest and study it. But as Peter reveals his evidence about what happened to his brother, the owner Vin Drake shrinks them and in a crazy turn of events, they are thrown out into the rainforest to die. So there they must survive the wild and somehow make it back to Nanigen to get to normal size again before they die of bends. Bends are internal bleeding they can all die from in three days. It is side effect to being so small.
The good? Well despite the silliness of the imaginative shrink ray shrinking people, who go into the tiny world the entomology science is great. Since there was little detail in the beginning as well as science facts the book made up for it with the tiny world. Having just served a semester in entomology science at college , I loved every bit of it. The characters are realistic. You learn to love them as it goes on. And like always, the action is original and fun.
So the bad? Well there’s a twist about two thirds into the book. And it is a really big change in vibe, direction of the story and sudden instantaneous change of the lead character of the book. This is the part of the book where my jaw dropped. This something I never seen in a Crichton book and I feel this is where the book was left unfinished and Richard took over. The last third felt to me like I was reading another book. The ending also seemed too unreal to me. It involved a air battles between the students on tiny planes and killer flying nano bots. The bad guy, Vin Drake seemed evil in a cartoony fashion leading up the showdown. Also a character that is thought to be dead shows up randomly to be a lead again. The resurrection seemed to come out of nowhere. Overall, the whole book switched tones.
But overall, the books isn’t bad. I love the first two thirds. The last third, I’m not too sure about. I would not recommend this to die hard Crichton fan and science nerd like myself, at twenty dollars. But if you see it at a descent price, grab it. It has its good parts.
Overall rating: Crichton’s last dive in science shows us the world of entomology.
2 ¾ smoothies out of four.
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