Reading Level: Adult
Submitted by Gerti

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I bought this book by Michael Crichton from the library book room, mainly on the power of Crichton's name, but also because I didn't realize it was fiction.  The cover screams a number of interesting questions-"Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blonde's becoming extinct?" And it seemed like a non-fiction study of these issues, and others.  (I think the cover we have from the catalog is different than the cover she purchased)

Instead, this book is a hodge-podge of ideas like those that Crichton attempts to knit into a cohesive story.  And from the first, I wondered if he were not perhaps just jotting down interesting ideas, and waiting for some screenwriter to knit them into a cohesive story, because although Crichton brings some of the characters and disparate story lines together by the end, it seems more like a patch job than something he intended from the beginning.

Some of the characters include: talking parrots, monkey children, lawyers, bounty hunters, scientists, CEO's, security guards, pet shop boys and the head of the NIH.  If it sounds scattershot, it is, and each scene contains new characters and issues, until I felt like I needed a score card to tell the people and plot lines apart.  Now I know I'm getting older and was never good at puzzles to start with, but this seemed like a hot mess and not in a good way.  I've read Crichton before and not had the problem of keeping characters straight, especially when I read the whole book in just a few days.  Some of the issues he touches on-including the morality of owning genes, and the small number of different genes between humans and other animals (like parrots), are fascinating ones.  But the whole thing could have used an editor to put the central theme into focus.