Helpful Score: 1
I really enjoyed this book...it was typical Michael Crichton, with lots of fantasy and lots of excitement...characters were believable..excellent!
Although I have almost always enjoyed Michael Chricton's books in the past, I read about half of this one but found I couldn't suspend my disbelief (about half inch tall scientists running around in a jungle) long enough to finish this one.
The first 75 or so pages of this book I was convinced that I was too stupid to read this book. I took several college level natural science courses including genetics, biology, botany, and I even student taught for environmental science for a semester. However I found myself looking up terms and even googling a few things to better understand what they were talking about. After page 75 or so the entire book did a 360 and it turned into more or less a version of, "Honey, I shrunk the Graduate Students." I'm sure many of us remember the 80's movie, "Honey I shrunk the Kids"? Just replace the kids with 7 graduate students and the dad with an evil businessman of a nano tech company bent on killing anything that did not agree with him.
I spent the next couple hundred of pages thinking to myself that this was one of the most ridiculous books I have ever read. It reminded me a lot of Jurassic Park. I don't really know what happened to me. All of a sudden I started enjoying the book. It was fun and I started to enjoy the written description of our world told from a micro human. I have sat out in my garden planting and just watching all the small insects, worms, and other bugs working their magic and wondering how much more I could see if I were as small as they were. We need these little creatures as much as we need food, air, and shelter.
So did I enjoy the book? Yes, I did. I think it's worth giving it a read. It is a bit campy, but so are so many other things that we enjoy.
I spent the next couple hundred of pages thinking to myself that this was one of the most ridiculous books I have ever read. It reminded me a lot of Jurassic Park. I don't really know what happened to me. All of a sudden I started enjoying the book. It was fun and I started to enjoy the written description of our world told from a micro human. I have sat out in my garden planting and just watching all the small insects, worms, and other bugs working their magic and wondering how much more I could see if I were as small as they were. We need these little creatures as much as we need food, air, and shelter.
So did I enjoy the book? Yes, I did. I think it's worth giving it a read. It is a bit campy, but so are so many other things that we enjoy.
Wow! This is great fun! Full of suspense, adventure: a hard journey well fought. Can't tell much of plot because it's all important to the plot and the denouement, but you won't be sorry you read it! Great summer read (anytime really, but it's great when you don't have to put it down and go to work)! Hope you'll try it and like it as much as I did!
If you buy the premise -- that human beings can be shrunk to less than 2" in height and still function -- this is a rip-roaring survival tale of predatory insects and resourceful heroes. The authors lose points for acknowledging the major problem -- minuscule lungs trying to process relatively large oxygen molecules -- but promptly lose them again for not even trying to come up with a hypothetical solution.
A page turner! Very exciting and harrowing!
A very thrilling book. Up to Crichton's usual standard of taking cutting edge technology and applying it creatively then everything goes awry. Read this and you will never look at bugs and soil in the same way as you do now. I couldn't put it down.
really good, fast paced.
Michael Crichton left the outline for this book when he passed away in 2008. The book was completed by Richard Preston. Exciting and super fast paced, this book is like Jurassic Park meets Honey I shrunk the Kids. It is a scientific compendium of the micro world of insects as observed by scientists who are fighting for their survival.
