Rating: 
Summary: Nanoparticles run amok.
Review: Michael Crichton, in his latest book "Prey," has returned to his "Andromeda Strain" and "Jurassic Park" roots. The hot topic of the day seems to be nanotechnology, which is also the theme of at least one other recent novel by a popular author. Nanotechnology, for the uninitiated is "the quest to build man-man machinery of extremely small size, on the order of a hundred billionths of a meter." The main character in "Prey" is Jack Forman, an out of work scientist, with expertise in creating computer programs that model biological processes. Jack is now a saintly stay-at-home dad, who takes care of the kids while his wife, Julia, works long hours at a mysterious company called Xymos. Julia and her colleagues are using nanotechnology to generate exciting medical applications. During the rare occasions when she is at home, Julia is tense and argumentative, and Jack suspects that his marriage may be in trouble. Only when Jack is hired as a consultant at Xymos does he discover that Julia and her colleagues are working on something that is top secret and extremely dangerous. For the first half of the book, Crichton does a bang-up job of creating an intriguing and frightening scenario. Since the reader has no idea what is wrong at Xymos, Crichton drops little innuendos and subtle clues to fire up our curiosity. By the time we get to Xymos, and Jack starts to sniff around, we are ready to be shocked by the revelations to come. Although there is gore and fright aplenty to please fans of this genre, Crichton is unable to sustain the excitement and intrigue throughout the novel. The ending is forced and a bit silly. There is no character development whatsover. Crichton's didactic theme is that man must not let his arrogance lead him to overreach, lest he unleash uncontrollable forces. This theme has been done to death, and it is getting a bit stale. However, I still give the book four stars for the dynamite beginning and for the fascinating primer on a technology that is real and absolutely amazing.
Rating: 
Summary: The worst book I've ever read
Review: Do not lose your time in reading this terrible novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor effort from an author who should know better
Review: Read this one on a glowing recommendation from my CS 511 prof - which just goes to prove just how stupid the academic elite can be. (Hey, I just proved Dr. Crichton's point and I didn't even have to create a race of super-powered machines to do it.) I'm just glad I got it out of the Borders bargain rack instead of paying list for it.
WARNING - HERE BE SPOILERS...
1) The characters are flatter than lavash bread. Jack is the put-upon saint, Julia is the career-chasing harridan, Ricky is the too-slick corporate type, and so on. I've read better characterization in "Xena: Warrior Princess" fanfiction.
2) Oh-so-convenient plot twists. The techie gurus involved in the Xymos project just happen to need an expert on evolutionary programming, which Jack just happens to have pioneered, so they just happen to fly him out to their top-secret research lab which just happens to be 160 miles from nowhere in the Nevada desert. Sorry, that's just a little too much coincidence for my diet. Oh, and by the way, Dr. Crichton: You've done the science run amok thing many, many times before, and considerably better. Find a new hobbyhorse, please.
3) Shoddy research - and since this is allegedly Crichton's forte, this upset me more than anything.
* Please pick an element - either the nanobots are carbon or silicon. If they're C, there's no reason to eat the memory chips; if Si, no reason to eat bunnies/snakes/humans. (Then too, if silicon was all they wanted, why only take the memory chips and leave the CPUs and such alone?)
* The 'bots should never have been able to survive their own manufacturing process - a 33-tesla magnetic field, pulsed or not, would fuse any metallic assemblage into unusable slag, and fry pretty much any electronically based memory storage system. (My Palm gets scrambled whenever I walk inside the 10-gauss limit of the chem building's NMR unit - that's only .001 T.) All they would have had to do to kill the 'bots permanently would be to pulse that sucker a couple times.
* Phage viruses do ugly things to bacteria, but they wouldn't touch any non-bacterial organism - like, oh, a 'bot.
* Crichton's handling of computer programming hasn't improved any since "Jurassic Park." When Jack goes code-diving into the 'bots' programming, I was painfully reminded of the BS hacking displayed by the kids (it was Tim in the book, Lex in the movie.)
4) As a previous reviewer said, plot holes a T. rex could stroll through. The last chapter (I refuse to call it a conclusion) raises more questions than it answers. The just-happens-to syndrome also recurs in full force.
The only thing that saved this book from a one-star review? One of the programmers is depicted as wearing a "Ghost in the Shell" T-shirt. (For those who've never hung out with an anime otaku or watched late-night Cartoon Network, GITS is a famous Japanese animated drama, which began as a graphic novel and spawned two animated movies and a TV series. It deals with a computerized world in which a rogue program evolves to sentience within the Internet, and how it interacts with the human world. GITS was the inspiration for "The Matrix," and it's also one of my favorite anime series. Dumb, but true.)
Speaking of which, I think I'm going to go throw my copy of "Ghost in the Shell" into the DVD player. At least Mamoru Oshii dealt with intelligent machinery, well, intelligently.
Rating: 
Summary: Typical Crichton Fare
Review: Crichton didn't go far enough in his vision of what nanotechnology is really capable of. Granted, in the book, nanotechnology is brand new and so we don't get to see it in all its glory, but we are led to believe that it is good only for turning once-well adjusted people into evil superhuman zombies. I don't have a problem with technology being corrupt, but the direction Crichton takes us in, I thought, is a tad juvenile and could easily have been concocted by an eleven-year-old.
Despite this drawback, the book was phenomenal for the first third. I found the stay-at-home-dad protagonist to be Crichton's most sympathetic, fully-fleshed, totally relatable character, and it was moving how emotionally confused he is at the prospects of his fantasy marriage falling apart. He's depressed. He's tired. He's flawed. He's human.
Then, as soon as he visits the Xymos research compound, he morphs into a typical Crichton square-jawed-walking-encyclopedia-MacGyver who is familiar with every single study conducted in the field of science and every paper written in any academic science journal since the dawn of mankind. And of course he can recall every last obscure detail from any of these studies and papers in a matter of nanoseconds. And all this from a guy who's been out of work for half a year. For once I'd like to see a Crichton protagonist declare, "I have no freakin' idea what's going on here!"
The storytelling is a little sloppy. He throws us all these mysterious, gripping clues and hints and then leaves you wondering about them until the last handful of pages. Basically it's: "You remember all those mysterious and gripping clues earlier in the book? Well, here are their explanations. Number one . . ." I enjoy the mystery, but not how the mystery is revealed.
I'm probably being too harsh. Did I enjoy the book while I was reading it? A resounding yes. A critic wrote that Prey is Crichton's most "cinema-ready" novel. While I disagree, it's certainly one of his strongest.
For a much more arresting view of what nanotechnology is capable of, read Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines.
Rating: 
Summary: Chrichton at his Best!
Review: One of the best Crichton books yet!
Absolutely no complaints at all! Suspensefull, riveting and original plot. The writing was so vivid, that as I turned each and every page I couldn't help but visualise the story in my mind. Like all his books, the underlying supportive facts and attention to detail immerse the reader so intently that he can't help but believe that he is part of a real life experience.
If you Like a little science fiction coupled with todays' cutting edge nano-technological advances, with a lot of mystery and a little drama, this book is for you!!
A guaranteed movie blockbuster if it goes to the cinema!!
Rating:
Summary: Best Novel I've Heard All Year...
Review: Jack Forman, a stay-at-home dad has a problem. His wife, a scientist and psychologist appears to be cheating on him. But is she really, or are things quite what they seem at the Zymos plant?
I really enjoyed Prey- I especially found it refreshing that the main character was a stay-at-home dad. This role-reversal was fun and refreshing. I especially LOVED the first 3/4's of this novel. The ending seemed.... Rushed, and I felt that Jack didn't seem to care that much for his wife. Also, I never really understood the 'swarm's motivation.' I would've liked to have understood it better, especially in regards to Julia's involvement with it. How much control did the swarm possess?
Overall, this was a superb book that kept me on the edge of my seat! I sincerely hope there is a sequel. We never did find out why the sprinklers didn't work!
Rating:
Summary: Disapointing
Review: As a fan of Mr. Crichton since Jurassing Park, I was eagerly looking forward to this work. After reading this book, however, I have to say I don't entirely know what to make of it. The premise is certainly frightening. The idea of nanotechnology running amok is a truly frightening idea, all the more so due to the current advances in that field. However, the story bogs down in the protaganist's strange family life for the first third of the book. Only after the main character makes his way to Xymos' plant in the desert does the story begin to become interesting. The emphasis on his family life could be much more engaging if any of the characters were remotely likeable. However, they're not. Reading the story, I almost wonder if Mr. Crichton didn't intentionally strive for an unsympathetic cast for whatever reason. The first-person perspective heightens the mystery aspect of the story, but becomes irritating after a while. Such an approach is always dangerous for a writer, because whatever the central character is thinking is almost always more interesting to the writer than to the reader. The book also has a rather formulaic feel to it, with the same basic problems recurring as in all of Crichton's books. In fact, it's basically Jurassic Park with more annoying characters and a less interesting "monsters". The characters and their fates are painfully predictable, even if the plot isn't. Indeed, the plot is one of the weakest areas of the book. The bizarre idea of the machines developing intelligence and taking human form passes the point of compelling and enters into the realm of the truly bizarre at a certain point. The ending is maddeningly ambiguous, explaining virtually nothing and basically just leaving the reader with a massive question mark. When I finally put it down, all I could think was, "What?". I also found the scientific aspect of this story to be overdone in comparison to his previous works, and generally less interesting. On the whole, I'd recomend sticking with Mr. Crichton's earlier works, such as the gripping Jurassing Park, or the far more original Time Line.
Rating:
Summary: Best book I've read in years
Review: I usually take months to finish a book. This book I finished in under a month and loved every minute of it.
This was the first Michael Crichton book I have read and was surpised to find how he can go into enough detail that I a computer programmer didn't feel he was making up complete nonsense but yet felt that non-technical people would get the same level of depth and meaning from his words. He's a talented author.
I thought I would find this book a bit of nonsense, but instead I caught myself quickly wrapped up in the story. He throws hints around and lets you feel like a genius by figuring somethings out yourself which keeps you reading further.
I don't want to spoil this wonderful book for anybody, so all I will say is if you enjoy suspense or mysteries definitely check this one out.
Rating:
Summary: Cerebral action thriller with a serious message
Review: Good as it is, the movie "Terminator" is obviously science fiction. Cyborgs are way beyond today's science, and time travel may be downright impossible. But how close could a writer get to "Terminator" using only technology that is available today, or will be within a few years? The result might well look a lot like "Prey". Crichton draws on his wide knowledge of current scientific developments to paint a terrifying scenario of what could happen, very soon, when greed and commercial ambition dictate cutting a few corners to get to market first.
Take some leading-edge nanotechnology, blend with software agent algorithms, sprinkle on some fairly standard biotech, and optimise for the requirements of the military. To anyone who knows a bit about software, that is a prescription for something you don't want anywhere on the same planet with you - but the protagonist of "Prey" finds himself up close and personal with. Crichton skilfully feeds the reader just enough information to keep the tension building steadily, but holds back a few devastating surprises.
On the downside, as with so many techno-thrillers, the end seems to come rather suddenly, and one or two really intriguing aspects of the plot are never fully explained. That may be the price of writing a novel that depends so heavily on technical riddles: when the action is done, it would be out of place to go on and wind up the lecture. Still, I for one far prefer novels that teach me things I didn't know before.
Rating:
Summary: Shelby Mehans thriller reveiw of Micheal Crichton's PREY
Review: Unexpected great ideas are crammed into this book written by the author of Jurassic Park! For example, a unique strategic airborne camera could be made of nano-technology machines of molecular level, which could be formed by making it a "swarm" in the air. This swarming and unswarming will be made possible by their own free will by autonomous allocation of roles of various camera parts. In war time it is very convenient tool to use because that camera can't be shot down and could be disintegrated into molecule level parts in such cases. It is seemingly an ultimate machine, but it has a fatal weak point of being easily swept away by the wind! The responsible research company can't get the necessary fund raised from sponsors because of this fatality, and begins dangerous wrongdoings... .
Like other Crichton stories, uncontrolled swarms go out of the laboratory and start attacking people as a monster. By the strenuous efforts of mankind, the danger is finally gone. But was it really exterminated? This is the usual Crichton endings! We can expect sequels to this story and movies as well.
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