Rating: 
Summary: DULL A PREDICTABLE: DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME
Review: This is not Michael Crichton's best work. An interesting idea, but not very well fleshed out or expanded. I could have done without the scenes with the kiddies and I found it hard to believe the hero ever loved his wife. So who cared if she became infected. PREY they don't make a movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Good read but not his best
Review: I have always been a huge fan of Michael Crichton. He is, in my mind, the most versatile and interesting writer of popular science fiction I know, and he is always able to make his stories so multidimensional. Sphere was many things: a suspenseful tale, a look at a perilous environment, and a fascinating metaphysical examination. While this book is more like Congo than Sphere, it still has plenty of cutting-edge science and more than enough suspense to keep anyone reading.The story goes something like this: Jack Forman, former software manager and current stay-at-home dad, is baffled by his wife's recent odd behavior, suspecting she's having an affair. When he is asked to assist in the project his wife has been working on, he jumps at the chance, but his notions are soon dispelled as he discovers that there are intelligent swarms of nano-organisms on the loose. The book centers on the efforts he undertakes to stop these micro-baddies, who are able to adapt and come up with new tactics at an alarming rate. The writing is excellent, as always, and Crichton is certainly on top of his game in writing a suspense story. It is a story that also asks interesting questions about the future of artificial life. Ultimately, it doesn't become greater than this, though. Sphere was philosophy, Disclosure was social criticism, and those were his best books. In any case, it's good to read another elegant page turner by this very capable writer.
Rating:
Summary: Shallow Characters and Weak Plot
Review: Although Crichton does have some talent in building suspense
(I couldn't put down Jurasic Park) this book is not worth
wasting your time on. The most irritating aspect I found
was the character development. He spends a lot of time on
elaborating on their domestic lives and then jumps into this
contrived high tech environment and just bounces around. Since
this book is allegedly about technology, I'd expect some more
emphasis on the characters day to day working lives in order to
get some better understanding of the situation they find themselves
in. But no, we get seemingly endless supermarket scenes where
the merits of Pampers versus Huggies are debated. You've
got to be kidding? These tangents to the plot don't add anything
and are just annoying. Then there are these interspersed
long winded explanations of nano-technology. I
work in the field and I can tell you he doesn't have a clue what
he's talking about. That's fine, this is fiction after all, but
then he could use a little more imagination in his descriptions
of this invented technology of his and make it a bit more tantalizing.
These passages are either tedious for tech-savy
folks or boring and opaque for lay people. Who proof read this
thing anyway??
At this point I'm three quarters of the way through the book
and I have my doubts whether I'll continue slogging through the
last fifty pages to finish this thing. There are better ways
of wasting an evening.
Rating:
Summary: Loopy. You do not know what will happen next.
Review: All right. You are a computer scientist/programmer. You made the Predprey system. Chrichton looks at every aspect of losing a job, and having 2 kids. Brutal. Then, as if to add more stress to the bundle, your wife is wearing clothes you never thought she would wear. She is losing weight, coming home late from work, and, on top of the great things already, your baby daughter nearly dies. Brutal. then, it gets more Chrichton-esque and gets into nanotechnology. Could this answer everything? Maybe, maybe not. Read to find out, while you still can.
You travel to Silicon Valley, only to find........your wife? now is when things get hairy, or should I say, quite "dirty". no, I mean like Dirt and Dust dirty. you get in all sorts of trouble, but you can't die, because you're the main character,right?
Rating:
Summary: Where are the characters?
Review: Jack Forman is a stay at home dad after being fired as a computer analyst for a respected company in Silicon Valley. His life begins to fall apart shortly after this: he suspects his wife, Julia, is having an affair (she comes home each night and showers before doing anything else), he can't find a local job to save his life, and now one of his three kids (the baby) is sick! She screams and screams and screams inconsolably until she's put in an MRI machine at a local hospital. What happened there? What happened is that nano-machines (tiny machines designed by man for tasking...whether it be medical or, let's say, military applications) were on Jack's daughter's body. They were accidentally brought home by Julia. Jack soon learns that Julia is working for a company called Xymos, a nano-tech, bio-tech firm with a secret base in the Nevada desert. They've been developing nano-machines for the military to help with spying. But something has gone amiss and Jack is summoned to help them figure it out. It seems that a program that Jack wrote called Pred-Prey was instilled into the nano-machines and now they're gaining some form of consciousness, killing things after being 'accidentally' set loose onto the Nevada desert. Now someone is in DEEP DO-DO! I don't mind techno-babble stories as long as they have strong characters. But this story dragged due to the overly-descriptive passages on nano-technology and the development of it as an antagonist. I read Timeline last year and wasn't very impressed by that novel either (simply because it read like a screenplay...and, what do you know! They're making a movie out of it! You can read my review of THAT story here at Amazon, too.). My advice to Mr. Crichton would be to not worry about trying to keep up with the techno-world so that you can develop "fresh new ideas." Come up with fresh characters and put them in some hairy situations. We'll follow you! I promise. D+ read.
Rating:
Summary: Swarm intelligence with a vengeance
Review: The formula for "Prey" is vintage
Chrichton - a new wonderful technology is invented.
Then someone makes a shortcut in order to meet
some deadline or to make some investors happy.
Then things start to go horrible wrong. Death
and mayhem follows. Here nanotechnology is the new cool technology.
The mistake is putting your designer organisms
out in the wild, free to breed and evolve.
So, the plot is pretty predictable,
but somehow it doesn't matter as suspense builds. Finally, you do become desperate to know how our hero
is going to make it out of the mess. Its all so believable: Surely, nano organisms designed
by humans are just waiting to happen.
And surely, they will by accident be released
into the wild.
Making us believe this isn't hard, but there
is more than just one dumb nano robot in the
Crichton plot. Actually there are a whole lot of
nano robots! And they are not dumb, as they coordinate
their intelligence in a swarm.
Working together to accomplish some goal.
Each robot programmed to follow simple rules,
but with emergent clever behaviour at the swarm level.
Really, really clever swarm behaviour. But, Ok, as things gets more complex, and more
scary, there are a lot of weak links in Crichtons chain
of reasoning. But what did you expect? Afterall, it
is a work of fiction!
Pretty good work I would say. -Simon
Rating:
Summary: The Dangerous Side Of Nanotechnology
Review: You could say that this is a modern day version of the classic THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN Michael Crichton wrote many years ago (also a fine movie). But here, instead of an alien virus menacing humankind, it is a villan of humans' own making, nanotechnology out of control, which in this book consists of microscopic machines on the rampage. The neo-Luddites should love this book. I suppose that, considering the vast potential and sheer power nanotechnology will probably give humanity someday, I can understand that we should be wary of this technology, proceeding with caution and with appropriate controls in place. Judging the novel solely in it's literary merits, I found the story engrossing and well written, although at times a bit far-fetched. Plot and character development were superb, it will keep your interest, and it is an excellent addition to the genre of disaster novels. In addition, interspersed throughout the book are little tidbits on different aspects of science, you can learn and it is not overbearing.
Rating:
Summary: Master Formula
Review: Chrichton is my favorite author. I love the techno-thriller that he has perfected over the years with his master formula. He intermingles science with suspense to create oustounding novels. Prey may not be his best, but it sure is an awesome novel. I just love those action sci-fi novels. My favorite is Sphere, but Prey is still a great novel. Keep up the good work Chrichton!
Rating: 
Summary: What you can't see can kill you
Review: Prey is a good read. It's fast, it's entertaining, it's even educational a little. I enjoyed reading it. It is a sold Crichton book, and a good beach or plane read.
The thing is ... it's not original enough to earn more than 3 stars. Crichton, while not being a great novelist (let's face it, his characters are not very well developed, they are just there, so the plot can move), nearly allways in the past was original. Before Crichton we haven't read about deadly viruses, nearly sentient gorillas (not counting "Planet of the Apes" or several comic-book characters), or dinosaurs in the modern world.
But deadly nanomachines ... well, we even had Mulder and Scully dealing with the problem in one of original X-files novels ("Antibodies"). The fact that the nanotechnology is not a novel idea in books is not, of course, the authors fault, but it makes the scientific aspect of the novel (which allways was one of Crichtons strong points) less interesting.
Also, I found the first part of the novel a bit too long. This is the part of the novel, which shows the life of the mysterious occurances, and the main character wondering about what's going on, etc. It is well written. But let's face it - you've read the back cover, so you allready know the reason behind all this.
That's the problem with many of todays novels, or maybe not novels, but books. Having to sell them, the publishers put too much information on the cover, and sometimes it spoils the experience of reading. I think that when it comes to Crichton or King, the publishers can wet our interest not by giving away plot points, but by surrounding the book in mystery - like the 5th Harry Potter book. If I've approached this book without any information about what i'll find inside, I would've definetly enjoyed it more.
Rating:
Summary: prey is o.k.
Review: Michael Crichton is a great writer.
Prey grabbed me in the first chapter.
But by the end I was just glad it was over.
I read this book in a single day.
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