It's been a long while since I wrote something here. I have been reading, but lacked the patience to write proper rants.
So, today, the 31st of December of 2021, I will try to write three short reviews, in the reverse order of reading.
**Warning: The text below might contain spoilers and a fair amount of sarcasm**
**Disclaimer: All of this is purely my personal opinion. That means that it's not worth anything for anyone but me.**
I decided to read this book due to the movies, in particular the first movie. I saw it as a kid, many years ago... maybe one or two years after it came out, so I should have been around 7-8 years old. This movie made me fall in love with dinosaurs, and I actually wanted to be a palaeontologist until the second to last year of secondary school (so around when I was 17 years old) - then I made an abrupt change to "History".
«The books are always better than the movies»... so I went in certain that I would like it, since I loved the movie. The main objective is to "know more" and to see what was changed for the movie.
Contrary to most people (according to other reviews that I just read), I actually loved the first half of the book, it was very slow paced, but it added a ton of information about the setting of the story. In the movie, all of this is condensed (and I understand why), or cut.
Then I got to the actual part of the story with dinosaurs... and I didn't really like it. I feel a bit guilty, but the characters didn't "say" anything to me. The two kids are just plain annoying, they add nothing but trouble. In the movies they were much better, maybe due to the change in age. In the book, Tim is 11 and loves dinosaurs, Lex is 6, and does not give a shit about dinosaurs, she just wants to play baseball and cause trouble. In the movie, Tim is maybe 10 and still loves dinosaurs, but Lex must be around 13-14, she doesn't particularly like dinosaurs, but is still amazed by them... and she is not useless, nor is she just an handicap.
Hammond, was also very disappointing in the book, at the start he appears to care about his grandchildren, but then, towards the end, he even despises them. I mean... I despised them too. I wished some Raptor would just eat them and end everyone's suffering. In the movie, Hammond plays the same role, but he actually cares about the kids, and he LOVES dinosaurs! The Hammond from the book, doesn't care about anything but money.
Ian Malcolm was also disappointing... what was the point of this character? He was just a herald and a way of presenting exposition. He spent most of the book on a death bed, saying "I told you so", in a hundred different philosophical ways... and then he died.
In general, most characters just made dumb decisions, for example, Hammond, after being "besieged" in a room by raptors, and passing by many dangers, seeing injured and dead people, just decides to take a stroll outside to «catch some air»... guess what? He died as well.
The dinosaurs themselves were also very inconsistent. In one chapter the raptors will track down and hunt the characters like expert hunters... on the next, the characters will stand a few meters away, inside the raptor nest, talk to each other, follow the raptors... and the damn animals don't notice a thing. They change according to the needs of the narrative.
So, in short, the second half of the book didn't do it for me. It lacked the emotion, the characters, and even the plot. A shame, but I don't think I'll move on to the sequel.
3/5, Still love the movie though.
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