If someone recommended to me a book about shape-shifting creatures who feed on human flesh to spawn and have a central mothership nest in the middle of a desert, I think I would have never, ever picked up that book and recommended Twilight to that person in return, out of sheer spite. Yes, and I think I would have picked Twilight over this kind of book in a heartbeat.Well, what do ya know, those would have been the most horrible mistakes that I could have ever committed in my life. Well, never judge a book by it's cover, or blurb, seriously.If you have noticed, most of my books in my shelves consist mainly of the romance and young adult genre. I'm sure some people out there have labelled me as sappy and shallow by now. But wait! I'll prove you wrong. I've finally read a Michael Crichton book. Ha! I AM WELL-READ, DEEPLY INTELLECTUAL AND SCIENTIFICALLY KNOWLEDGABLE! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA....!Yeah, I'm exaggerating here, and having finished a Michael Crichton book from first page to last should not be the (only) benchmark to judge whether people are just shallow-minded or not. But reading a Michael Crichton book is anything but easy. It's mind-boggling. It's like reading an entire Encyclopedia and learning how to see the interdisciplinarity between the many scientific fields out there. Wow. From computer programming to distributive intelligence to emergent behavior to parasitism and symbiosis to microbiology. A-freaking-mazing. Crichton seems to have an inspirations-overload and regurgitated his entire bachelor and postgraduate Science degrees (Ok, I don't really know the educational background of Crichton, but if he didn't graduate from Science in reality, you definitely would have a hard time convincing me otherwise.) in one entire book without making the storyline seem haphazard. The plot actually makes a lot of sense. I would love to have Crichton as my Science teacher.Hailed as a typical Michael Crichton classic, Prey is a book about a group of white-collar scientists and engineers embarking on an ambitious project only to have things turn awry and ultimately out of their control when they come to realize their so-called project seems to have a mind of its own and turns against the researchers. The brilliance of the book lies in the usage of scientific facts to corroborate the plot so that readers will be convinced of the plot's reality. It's like a forboding prelude to the scientific problems mankind will face in the near future. I bet Crichton's first book ever as a kid in the sixties or seventies (I'm just guessing and am probably wrong; I don't even know his age) is about environmental pollution and climate change. Crichton's book has an unnerving portent for technology-caused calamities which I can only prey - oops! I meant pray will not come true.I'm so proud of myself; I can now spout big words like microbrewery, self-organization, lithotrophic base and assembler design (Ok, with a very ambiguous understanding about what each of the words mean)! This book is not for lazyheads. Merely to comprehend the basic idea of how the predators (not the dinosaurs from Jurrasic Park, but the predators in Prey - Ok, that sounds really weird - and sorry, I cannot be more specific about what the predators are or I'll be giving the most shocking part of the book away; think bees crossed with zombies - Ok, that must have seemed even weirder) came into existence requires readers' full attention to the scientific facts weaved throughout the story. I know most of the reviews for this book on Goodreads are quite negative, but as a student who hasn't gone to college yet, my advantage is that I don't have to suspend any disbeliefs (I don't have any to suspend, sadly) to find the book a believable read. This book makes me want to embark on a science-related career to see firsthand the miracles of science and the coolest technologies that can be invented; yet the book makes me hesitant to study science in fear of having the pleasure of reading sci-fi books lost to me forever. Ironic.Prey is not merely for nerds. There are plenty of action and suspense throughout the book for everyone and anyone (Ok, maybe just anyone who loves action and science) to enjoy. This book is not for the faint-hearted! Before I end this review, I would like to leave readers with a few words of caution: beware of human-eating shape-shifting pee-in-your-pants-inducing predators! According to Crichton, yes, the existence of such creatures seems frighteningly possible and vivid in the near future with the advancement of science. No, I am not talking about the vampires from Twilight, *wink wink. Unless Crichton starts a new book about how vampires can actually exist from the viewpoint of science, I will never believe in the existence of Twilight vampires. God, I would LURRRRVE to see Crichton try.
I remember I first learned that Jurassic Park was actually a book - that was sometime last year. Well, I read it this year, and Jurassic Park turned out to be one of the best books I've ever read. And then I saw Prey by Michael Crichton (the genius behind Jurassic Park) and figured "There's no way this is as good as Jurassic Park." After reading it, though, I found out that Prey is another home run by Michael Crichton, a spectacular book comparable to Jurassic Park, and probably a top three book I've ever read (not counting The Series of Unfortunate Events, of course).Prey is a first-person story about Jack Foreman, a former employee at MediaTronics (sorry if I mess up the plotline; I finished the book in January). Jack, unfortunately, got fired from MediaTronics; and now, Jack is a stay-at-home dad. Jack's wife, Julia, works at Xymos, a rival corporation, and Jack believes that Julia is having an affair with Ricky, who owns Xymos. Eventually, Julia shows Jack a new creation at Xymos: a cloud of nanocameras that works as one big camera that Julia says are meant for medical purposes. Soon thereafter, Ricky invites Jack to the Xymos laboratory in Nevada to help fix a problem. The problem is, one of the camera swarms got loose. And it is learning and adapting - and soon enough, it starts killing off the Xymos scientists. Throughout the adventure in Nevada, Jack learns the truth about the nanocameras, the truth about Ricky and Julia, and Jack even gets to meet some of his former employees. Prey starts off slow, setting everything up; but once it gets going, it doesn't stop. Prey is an extremely exciting and adrenaline-packed book. It has a lot: suspected affairs, killer nanobots, explosions, and the like. and it is all extremely fun to read. The book is also written in Michael Crichton's informal style, and that makes Prey that much more exciting and fun to read. The book does a spectacular job making you actually develop feelings toward the characters, and I found myself rooting for Jack in the final scene against the bad guys. Also, I found myself feeling dislike for Julia and Ricky throughout the book. And, being Michael Crichton, you get to learn stuff, and you get to have fun doing it. So all in all, Prey is a spectacular book. It is not as good as Jurassic Park, but Prey sure comes close. The energy, pacing, and action of Prey, as well as the sheer entertainment value, make Prey one of my favorite books of all time.
What do You think about Prey (2003)?
The one good thing I can say about the book Prey is this: it's easy to review because I can just cut and paste my review to some of the author's other books and feel like I'm understanding the author's artistic method. I'm looking at you in particular, Timeline and Jurassic Park, although Jurassic Park receives more stars by simply being the first of his that I read, many years before the movie was made.It opens with the discovery of time travel/nanotechnology/perfectly preserved dinosaur DNA. Crichton's strength has always been the way he explains the premise of each book. His knights/nanomachines/dinosaurs are meticulously researched and presented in a plain and easy-to-understand manner, and through his research, we learn things about them that shatter our preconceptions of them.Here, the other running theme emerges - that our preconceptions, viewed through the imperfect lens of archeology/theoretical research/paleontology are always wrong, and the knights/nanomachines/dinosaurs, don't act the way that we thought they would and become a danger to the hero of the piece, who must call upon his esoteric knowledge of scientific specialty to save the day.All in all, a good read, I guess. But when compared to the author's other works (at least the few that I've read), a great weaver of science fiction is revealed as a bit of a one-trick-pony.
—Chris
I thought this book was pretty good, even though I'm not huge into science fiction. I've seen that lots of people review this book and say that the science is so farfetched that it's unbelievable and stupid, but honestly, it's fiction. It's not supposed to be perfectly believable. Suspension of disbelief is required when reading this. I personally just enjoy books that can entertain me, and this one did. It brought up some interesting "what if" concepts, even though they would never really happen in real life. The logic was still interesting. However, I will say that the characters were not really very developed. I didn't bother trying to remember what names went with which description of each person when Jack went to the fab factory because the characters were stereotypical and not really important as individuals. Also, there was a lot of cussing, which I didn't like. Overall, I enjoyed this book. I recommend it if you are into science fiction, but you must remember that it is fiction and not take it seriously at all. It really is unbelievably farfetched, but that's the point of fiction, anyway. It's meant to entertain.
—Cara
Knjiga pokojnog Majkla Krajtona iz 2002-e godine, roman Plen, ima, cini mi se neopravdano nisku ocenu u rejtingu na ovom sajtu. Knjiga je pravi predstavnik Krajtonovskog opusa, i u njoj se preplicu triler, horor, misterija, ima tu malo i ljubavnog zapleta,cisto da se stvar dodatno zacini. Plen mi se svidja jer je jedan od onih romana koji je isprican u prvom licu, gde glavni junak, emotivni i smuseni kompjuterski inzenjer Dzek Forman, gleda kako mu se brak i zivot polako ali sigurno raspadju, bez mogucnosti da stvar promeni na bolje... A kada konacno bude preuzeo stvar u svoje ruke, shvatice da je njegov neprijatelj daleko sofisticiraniji i opasniji nego sto je ikada mogao da zamisli...Roman je prakticno podeljen na dva velika dela, gde se radnja prvog odvija u San Hozeu, a radnja drugog u pustinji Nevade.Uzbudnjiv, napet, emotivan, roman, sa jasnom porukom, koji svima toplo preporucujem.Ovo je review sa Laguninog sajta, valja ga spomenutim jer na zanimljiv nacin objasnjava o cemu je rec:U pustinji Nevada, jedan eksperiment se oteo kontroli. Oblak nanočestica – mikrorobota – pobegao je iz laboratorije. Oblak koji sam sebe održava i može da se razmnožava. Inteligentan je i uči na osnovu iskustva. Praktično gledano, živ je.Programiran je kao lovac. Razvija se brzo i svakim satom je sve smrtonosniji.Propao je svaki pokušaj njegovog uništenja.A ljudska rasa je njegov plen...Uzivajte!
—Marko Rančić
