Review of ‘The Lost World’

The Lost World by Michael Crichton is the second and final book in the sci-fi adventure series Jurassic Park.

Challenging

Something is challenging about the novel, but what’s challenging is the fact that the story just seems far too similar to the first novel. Scientists travel to the island, there are two kids, and then there are dinosaurs. There’s the added element that this book is progressing the plot of the second novel, but there are far too many similarities between this one and the first making it just sounds redundant.

Now that’s not to say that it is a bad novel it just read so much like the first one that it just didn’t feel fresh. It has a very slow beginning that reintroduces the reader to the idea that Ian Malcolm is not dead like everyone thought when they read the first novel. Then there is the cover-up of the events in the first novel that some people like the annoying Levine want to uncover.

Ugh, Levine. He was by far the worst thing about this book. Sure, some characters in the previous novel were annoying, but it wasn’t just blind stupidity, it was greed that made them stupid. Maybe a desire for knowledge and power is what makes Levine so stupid. He’s clearly an intelligent person, but he’s also so dumb and doesn’t care about whose lives he puts in danger. And this isn’t an amusement park like the first novel so why the heck are there kids on this island, in this perilous place and why the hell did their parents let them go? That all seems just so incredibly bogus.

There’s nothing really thought-provoking in this novel like in the first novel. Sure, there is the idea that messing with nature, bringing back things that should no longer exist is dangerous, very dangerous. It just feels as if this novel was just all about that question of what if the dinosaurs escaped, what if everything wasn’t so perfect? It sure answers that question and resolves it quick enough, bringing back the competition into the game. There’s certainly a lot of tension in the novel itself, but it just feels like more of the same without anything really making it stand out.