Airframe

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Summary: this is a very good book
Review: hello there im a high schooler and a popular guy and dont read very much but i read this for our manditory reading and i have to say for a book this is pretty freaking sweet

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Summary: More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Commercial Airplanes
Review: Don't get me wrong, this book was good and exciting, but some of the bits seem like reading a technical airplane book. Fortunately I didn't mind it, Crichton has a way of making it usually very interesting. To me, it seemed there was a lack of suspense, but the book was still interesting; it was very much like reading a great magazine article about commercial airframes with a loose plot tied in to make it more interesting.

An airplane has crashed, killing three people and injuring pretty much everyone else. Casey Singleton, the VP of Quality Assurance at Norton Aircraft, must help the team figure out what went wrong by the end of the week or the company will miss an airplane deal with Bejing that will save the company. Not to give anything away, I will say that there are some fairly-unpredictable plot turns at the end.

Another thing that bothers me about this book is the countless characters and acronyms in the book. It takes awhile before I started to remember who all the nonessential characters were and since airplanes are so technical-like, there is a lot of industry jargon and acronyms thrown in to the mix.

I had mixed feelings about this book. It was enjoyable to read, but I never really felt there was any real suspense. However, this book is great if you are interested in technical things, especially airplanes.

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Summary: Review of Michael Crichton's Airframe
Review: Airframe, like many other Michael Crichton novels, deals with the impact of technology on society. In airframe, however, the perils of technology actually derive from the impact of television media, while being informative and maybe a little condescending about the wisdom and perils of modern air travel. Also like his other novels, Airframe has a fairly likeable protagonist (this time, a female by the name of Casey Singleton), a suspenseful plot yanked along by a looming deadline, high technology, a seemingly greedy and/or malevolent big business, a huge business decision that would make or break everyone, and a cast of seemingly moronic second tier characters.

Actually Airframe resembles Disclosure in many ways (except the whole sexual harassment thing), which is not necessarily a bad thing, though is somewhat predictable ' you'll find that in portions of the novel apparently nothing ever really happens, and the investigation really goes nowhere (to the exasperation of one of the characters).

Still, Mr. Crichton maintains more than what is needed to keep the reader to not stop turning the pages. The plot, which occurs early on a Monday morning, involves a passenger aircraft over the Pacific that has an 'incident,' for lack of a better term. Several people end up dying, and many more are injured. Norton Aircraft manufactures the aircraft, where Casey Singleton is the Quality Assurance representative for the company's Incident Response Team - responsible for figuring out what happens on any kind of incidents regarding Norton planes. The incident needs to be resolved by the coming Friday, as there is talk of a company-making (or breaking) deal with China to be solidified since then. Any bad publicity could kill the deal.

The story quickly goes into the fast-paced investigative mode as Casey and the various members of the Incident Response Team first unravel, than uncover why the aircraft did what it did and the discrepancies in crew testimony. Along the way Mr. Crichton, through a convenient new assistant, lays out the concept of aircraft and safety, the FAA, deregulation, media ignorance, black boxes, accident investigation, and practically everything else you wanted to know.

By the middle of the week a television news magazine similar to 60 Minutes jumps on the story when a video taken by a passenger during the incident suddenly airs on CNN. The producer, who builds, researches, and pushes the stories in television news organizations, is a young up-and-coming woman who right off the bat comes off as one of Mr. Crichton's antagonist morons (Casey's assistant, anti-Norton 'watchdogs,' various Norton executives, and all kinds of union workers are the others) that you wouldn't mind slapping after five minutes of conversation. Of course, the media practically gets everything wrong, through which Casey has to patiently explain everything (to the reader), as the investigation builds to ' well, not a whole lot as it turns out ' and then the mystery is uncovered through a semi-dramatic ending.

It's as if Mr. Crichton didn't really know how to end the book, and once you understand the cause behind the incident, you'd think there's no way it could have been like that. Unfortunately, aircraft accidents have happened in much simpler ways, but you wish that Mr. Crichton could have been a little more inventive. There aren't too many interesting characters, and the rest are unsympathetic at best. I find it hard to believe union workers would act like that, but again I suppose there is precedent.

Airframe is a good book that uses Mr. Crichton's patented dramatic pacing and technology (media) gone amok, but really concludes weakly, though it pretty much solves everything ' just like Disclosure. Is that good or bad?

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Summary: A Fast Read
Review: Author or Under the Lontar Palm ISBN: 1588510980
Great book and fast reading thriller. This story could have been stolen from the news. I actually wanted to get into Quality Control with an air line manufacturers after reading about it. The Heroine was very realistic. Great work.

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Summary: riveting and fast paced
Review: I am constantly amazed by the breadth of Michael Crichton 's interests and by his remarkable skill in researching his subjects. I also find his indirectly expressed issues of more than passing significance. In Jurassic Park the issue is the arrogance of science in its manipulation of nature and the tendency of Western science to eschew accountability for the spillover costs to society when things go wrong. Airframe is another example of it. Here the issue of the freedom of speech and the lack of accountability of the media, particularly television news, is explored. In a society that has come to stress individual rights, little emphasis has been placed on individual responsibility. In order to be a functional culture, there has to be a balance of both rights and responsibilities. Airframe makes this abundantly clear.

As so often with Crichton's central characters, a uniquely placed individual must come to grips with the inherent difficulties of fighting an uphill battle against society's inertia. The heroine, Casey Singleton, is given the task of deciding how a disasterous air accident happened before a crucial business deal collapses and takes the company she works for and all of its employees down with it. It is by no means clear what is taking place, and ultimately she must come to trust her own personal interpretation of events to bring things to a head.

The detail is impressive. The characters are well developed and real. The story is riveting and fast paced. A thoroughly enjoyable book.

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Summary: Interesting and Thrilling
Review: I love this book. I love the detail, the suspense, it is just impossible to put down. The story never felt slow or lacking and even re-reads are exciting. It is impossible not to enjoy this wonderful work. What would be interesting is if it was made into a movie, as I could see it happening.

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Summary: Technical jargon as high drama? I don't think so!
Review: Crichton has always excelled at mixing his intense research into often mysterious subjects with dramatic, even melodramatic, plots. ANDROMEDA STRAIN told us more about germs and stuff than we wanted to know, but it was gripping. JURASSIC PARK told us a bit more about dinosaurs and stuff than we needed, but it was a good, old-fashioned monster show. DISCLOSURE probably delved more into specifics of harassment law than we needed to enjoy the book, but that gave it an authentic, journalistic edge.

In AIRFRAME, I'm sorry to say, the jargon is almost all there is. After an exciting opening chapter, it takes almost the entire book for anything of true interest to happen. We follow Casey, our lead character, from one meeting after another with a bunch of faceless engineers who are going over the plane that was involved in a mishap, trying to find the cause. Once in awhile, her life is in jeopardy, but Crichton writes the technical jargon with the same intensity, speed and emphasis that he does the plot twists, so that the entire book feels the same. It's not a plot peppered with authentic detail...it's a textbook occasionally lightened with some fiction.

Crichton is not the greatest writer (from a literary standpoint) anyway, but his books are so cinematic and crammed with plot that you can still burn through and feel entertained with ease. AIRFRAME is an exception...a clunky book that never takes flight.

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Summary: Airframe Reviewed
Review: A airplane's interior cabinet has been mysteriously demolished beyond belief. Three passengers are dead and fifty-six are injured. However, the captain still manages to land the aircraft. How? Casey Singleton, a vice-president of Quality Assurance at Norton Aircraft has been assigned the task of investigating this bizarre accident and finding out the truth of what happened and how. Throughout her journey, twists and turns come when you least expect them. The mystery and suspense is soaked into each and every page of the amazing , yet believeable story. You won't want to put this book down until the very last pages...and after that, you'll just be longing for more. Definately a must-read.

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Summary: Michael Crichton at his worst
Review: I am a huge Michael Crichton fan. I love his books more than any others and once I pick them up, I cant put them down. Im sorry that I cant say that about this novel. It was terrible.

This is a very different kind of book than other Crichton novels, and maybe that is why I couldnt get into it. I felt that it was dry, and un interesting. If you are into planes, then maybe this book will be for you, mainly because of all the technical info about aircrafts. But this is more of a book about an investigation of a plan that almost crashes. I got half way through the book and stopped reading it. I just made me want to go to sleep. Boring Boring Boring. I didnt want to put it down, just because i know that Crichton is always full of surpises. But if i got halfway through the book with none yet, then I didnt think anything special was coming up.

As I said before, I didnt like this book at all, but some may be into this kind of stuff. If so, feel free to pick it up, but for all that are bored by investigations that dont have any thrill to them, pass this book up.

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Summary: Excellent story
Review: Airframe is Crichton at his best. The story is full of detailed information about the commercial airline industry that I would never have known without having read this book. He fizzles out on the ending, but the set up and wealth of techincal detail was quite interesting.