name: Micro_A_Novel isbn13: 9780060873028 isbn: 0060873028 title: Micro: A Novel author: Michael Crichton author: Richard Preston publisher: Harper year: 2011 acquired: 2011 start: 2012-04-05 stop: 2012-04-11
I received this book as a Christmas present. I've liked previous Michael Crichton novels, but they do tend to become formulaic. Crichton was still working on this manuscript when he died and Preston finished it for publication.
I started it while vacationing in Waikiki, which is interesting since the action is set on O'ahu.
Crichton novels are pretty formulaic. There is a team of experts. They get in trouble because of technology run amok. Not everyone makes it. Anyone who has anything to do with money is automatically a psychopath. The technologies change, the experts change, but the basic formula remains the same.
There are many facts that are well presented, so you learn a lot reading the book. But Crichton tends to take fringe ideas and use them as central plot devices. He expounds how these ideas are so revolutionary that they turn their field upside down. There is a good reason why these ideas are so fringe. And Crichton can be quite pedantic when he shows off how "he gets it better than all the experts in that field." This is why I stopped reading his novels after I had read Timeline. (I still watched the movie, though.)
Micro is a typical Crichton novel. As someone else said: a kind of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids for adults. The premise is mildly interesting. The treatment is not really inspired. The characters are not really likable. The plot twists are not completely surprising or really inspired. The novel has one really cool thing going for it: it is set on O'ahu. I'm glad I read it after my trip to Waikiki so I could really dig the landmarks.