This book was a weird mix of complicated and really simple. The writing is basic and serviceable; the story moves along at a brisk pace. But the sciencey bits bog things down a bit, and the sheer number of characters got a little confusing. I would say 85% of chapters begin like this: “Mr. A woke up and did Z.” Then the next chapter: “Mr. B left his office and did Y.” Then “Ms. C hung up the phone and did X.” “Mr. D cheated on his wife and thought W.” It’s a looooot of new people to remember, and by the time he finally gets back around to telling us what Mr. A was up to later in the book, I’d forgotten who he was. The characters aren’t very well-defined, and the names run together. There was a Mr. Beckett and a Mr. Burnett, I think, and two little boys named Jamie, for example. The only character I was ever sure I knew who he was, was the chimpanzee.
This review is becoming as needlessly complicated as the book, but I’m not sure I can boil all the threads of the story down. There are some scientists, scrupulous and un, experimenting with transgenic animals – adding human DNA to other creatures. There are some lawyers arguing cases about patenting genes. There are some experiments that worked swimmingly, resulting in a talking chimpanzee and a math-doing parrot (the parrot actually might’ve been the most interesting character). There are some sleazy investors and venture capitalists, and some bounty hunters who are seriously committed to their jobs. There are some crooked medical examiners and grave-robbers in the mix, for reasons I still can’t quite figure out. I can’t even really tell you what started the plot rolling, but it ends in a chase scene with a lawyer and her son running away from the bounty hunters to protect their genes, the chimpanzee and his adopted scientist family in hot pursuit, and a bitter ex-husband of another scientist trying to get rid of the talking, thinking, math-adept parrot, and thus ruining her experiment. All these things come together quite neatly, with lots of convenient coincidences.
The story parts are all very simple, with very straightforward characters. There are just so MANY of them, and so much going on, and then Crichton stops and gives little lectures on science and ethics and corporations and universities. Then back to the action! It’s a weird flow, but a very quick read. If you’re going to be stuck on a train for three hours anytime soon, you could do worse, but you might need to take notes on the cast of characters.
