Rating: 
Summary: Stinker. Utter, absolute, bottom of the barrel stinker.
Review: The worst book I've ever started reading. If I could turn back time, I'd rather have spent that twenty bucks paying someone to punch me in the face. This was atrocious, there's no other word for it (but let's try to find some anyway.) I'd say the characters were carbon copies, but that would be an insult to poor characters everywhere. The plot was utterly banal, and it's astonishing that this guy felt the plot was enough to hold the novel up, so much so that he put no effort into character. I feel cheated, because on the cover the quote was: "It doesn't get any better than this." I imagine whoever typed that was on the payroll or sharing the author's bed, there can be no other motive for such praise. This book was utterly dreadful, I cannot say it enough to get the taste of this novel out of my mouth. Utter bilge. There were even spelling mistakes in there for crying out loud, for instance: 'menat' should have been 'meant.' Trash. Books like this are the reasons people stop buying books.
Rating: 
Summary: Three Painful Weeks to Read
Review: There always seems to be a good Lincoln Child & Douglas Preston novel to read every couple of months, and generally when books are pumped out like that they seem to become a little repetitive. But fortunately thats never happened with these authors. They've continually brought solid technologically advanced page turners that never seem to quit. Thats why it was interesting to see these two split up for a bit and see what they can do on their own.Utopia is a theme park beyond all theme parks and puts Disneyworld to a crying shame. The characters are forced to deal with a group of alleged terrorists who are after some advanced holographic technology exclusive to the park. But there is a twist later on. I don't know anything about holograms or robots but apparently Lincoln Child does and he knows a lot. Unless of course he's making all those big words up and he really doesn't know what he's talking about. But I'm pretty sure he does and the research he must have put into the novel must have took some serious time. Thats one thing that I've come to appreciate about the work he's done before, and it's refreshing to know that Lincoln Child can pull it off by himself. The only problem I had with the story is the timeline of the whole thing. The chapters are actually time intervals, and the whole story happens in one day. For the most part it was pulled off well, but sometimes it felt the action would have taken longer than the time the chapter actually lasted. But this was a minor flaw and it doesn't effect the over all flow of the book. I look forward to more joint ventures between Lincoln Child & Douglas Preston and more solo efforts, I can never get enough of Special Agent Pendergast.
Rating: 
Summary: A good techno-thriller!
Review: This book has all the ingredients a thriller should have. We have a futuristic theme-park with a bunch of terrorists threatening to kill people if their demands aren't met and any move to try to warn the customers or try to determine how the terrorists have infiltrated the computer systems, will result in many customer deaths.
In the theme park called Utopia, holographic technology and realistic historical depictions are the norm with robots performing maintenance and in some instances, serving the clients. Something seems to cause the robots to malfunction (I just remember the line "Welcome to Westworld, where nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong..."). The robot's programmer is called in to deprogram and remove the robots. What he finds is that instead of accidental system problems, someone has planted a "Trojan horse" program that causes the malfunctions.
Meanwhile, the park's management is approached by a terrorist, to give the master program of the park's core program, or a lot of people will die. We later find that this program could be used by the military to defeat heat seeking missiles and other programmed armaments. Therefore, giving up the code could have world-wide ramifications.
The story progresses to an exciting conclusion. The only issue I had that prevented me from giving it 5 stars, is people are getting hurt and killed on the attractions and the park officials are able to keep it quiet from law enforcement. I you can overlook this, then it should be a perfect thriller.
Rating: 
Summary: A very good story. 4 1/2 stars, I rounded up.
Review: Utopia is a 21 century amusement park, the most advanced park in the world. Utopia is made up of four (a fifth to open soon) different "worlds" under a dome. Camelot, a midieval world; Callisto, a futuristic space-station world; Gaslight, a turn-of the century London themed world; Boardwalk, themed after those turn-of-the-century parks located near a beach; and soon to open Atlantis, themed after the lost-continent of the same name.
The story takes place during one day. The park is running smoothly, when terrorists quietly let themselves be known to the big-wigs, making demands or causing terror. Dr. Andrew "Drew" Warne, a robotics expert from Carnegie-Mellen University, visiting the park as an external-specialist, finds himself doing more than what was expected, but instead leading the way to saving the park and it's visitors. Utopia is a beautifully written book, sometimes the descriptions and thoughts written within the story will remind you of a good-piece of fast moving literature. I very much enjoyed reading this, and found it exceptionally hard to put down and I actually cared about the characters. Even some of the terrorists were intellectual and fun to read about.
There were just a few problems with the book, however. The character of Georgia, Warne's daughter, seems, for 14 years old, to act both too young and too old. Also I truly hated Sarah Boatwright, the Chief of Operations of the park, and past girlfriend of Warne. She was just an egotistical, annoying and irresponsible person, and I have no idea how someone like Warne would have ever loved her.
Rating:
Summary: A very good story. 4 1/2 stars, I rounded up.
Review: Utopia is a 21 century amusement park, the most advanced park in the world. Utopia is made up of four (a fifth to open soon) different "worlds" under a dome. Camelot, a midieval world; Callisto, a futuristic space-station world; Gaslight, a turn-of the century London themed world; Boardwalk, themed after those turn-of-the-century parks located near a beach; and soon to open Atlantis, themed after the lost-continent of the same name.
The story takes place during one day. The park is running smoothly, when terrorists quietly let themselves be known to the big-wigs, making demands or causing terror. Dr. Andrew "Drew" Warne, a robotics expert from Carnegie-Mellen University, visiting the park as an external-specialist, finds himself doing more than what was expected, but instead leading the way to saving the park and it's visitors. Utopia is a beautifully written book, sometimes the descriptions and thoughts written within the story will remind you of a good-piece of fast moving literature. I very much enjoyed reading this, and found it exceptionally hard to put down and I actually cared about the characters. Even some of the terrorists were intellectual and fun to read about.
There were just a few problems with the book, however. The character of Georgia, Warne's daughter, seems, for 14 years old, to act both too young and too old. Also I truly hated Sarah Boatwright, the Chief of Operations of the park, and past girlfriend of Warne. She was just an egotistical, annoying and irresponsible person, and I have no idea how someone like Warne would have ever loved her.
Rating: 
Summary: You wont miss anything if you skip this book.
Review: When I picked this book up I thought that I was about to encounter the absolute worst premise of all time. All you have to do is read the dust jacket to groan with the possible clichés that might run rampant throughout this book. I have read all of Lincoln Child's books co-authored with Douglas Preston and have found them for the most part to be entertaining. So I thought that regardless of what looked like a disaster of an idea, I would give this a go anyways.
Surprisingly Child managed to craft a pretty taught though implausible thriller here. His characters are very one-dimensional and are not developed at all. But his use of the English language is remarkably well suited for this type of writing. He manages to craft a story that is quickly consumed and that keeps the reader plodding along in suspense. There is no originality occurring here, and at its core is a plot that is as old as the hills. But Child manages to keep the reader engaged through his expert grasp of suspense.
I would like to see Child and Preston read Edward Bunker's `Dog eat Dog.' I would like for them to see how Bunker treats his protagonist and pull some aspects of this into their mainstream wonder bread characterizations. It would be unique and startling if they would combine the two.
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