Jurassic Park Book Review

Jurassic Park Book Cover

The Jurassic Park series has exploded over the years and the success of the first movie lead to numerous sequels and spin offs as well as video games and merchandise. However, it all started with the 400 page novel that got lost in translation to the big screen. The novel varies vastly from the movie and many plot lines and character were changed. However the movie is a masterpiece in itself.

Jurassic Park Novel Review

Jurassic Park is an amazing novel that brings everyone's childhood dream of meeting a dinosaur to life. The book starts out with an injured worker who is brought to a small clinic in Costa Rica and has mysterious injuries that are from a raptor. The workers try to hide this and say it was a work accident. Then a young girl vacationing with her family is attacked on the beach by small lizard like creatures. This in turn leads to a specimen being recovered and sent away for analyzing. From the opening pages the book has a mysterious feel to it. 

We are then introduced to Dr. Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler who work in paleontology. The are at a site in the badlands in the northern United States (Snakewater, Montana). They are given an offer to fly down to Costa Rica and see a project that INGEN is working on after meeting with an EPA investigator. John Hammond is the architect behind this project and has hired numerous people to over see this grand envision. Donald Gennaro is the lawyer that is looking over the INGEN project and is also going to visit Ilsa Nublar (Jurassic Park's island). Dennis Nedry is introduced as a villian who is planning to steal the embryos from the project and sell them to the competing company for over one million dollars with the infamous Gillette Foamy shaving cream can.

The group flies down to Dallas to pick up the mathematician Ian Malcolm. He is really into chaos theory and is a pessimist. He believes that the project was doomed from the start. They then continue to Isla Nublar. When they arrive they realize that the island is full of dinosaurs. Everyone is speechless and wonders how INGEN did this and why? Grant and Ellie are extremely excited to see the animals in which they have been studying their whole lives. The character Ed Regis is takes them to the park buildings.


 Tim and Lex Murphy who are Hammond's grandchildren arrive later on the island right before the tour of the island project begins. Tim is interested and dinosaurs and computers. Lex is younger and is a real sports fanatic. The join the tour and Ed Regis is their supervisor through the tour. The group goes on the tour of the lab and are introduced to Dr. Wu. Wu is the lead scientist behind the dinosaurs and he fills in the missing dna strands as necessary. They then meet John Arnold the head engineer that overlooks the park security, animals, and fences.


The tour of the park's dinosaurs begins and the patrons split between two land cruisers. The tour continues with a few problems until the cruisers come across Harding the park's veterinarian. Here they find a sick stegosaur that has been ingesting poisonous plants. Ellie and Gennaro stay behind to help Harding. The Park Warden Muldoon is introduced while the tour is occurring. The tour continues and they witness dinosaurs exiting the island on the deck of the ship.


During this time Nedry turns off the park's security and attempt to steal the dinosaur embryos. He is successful in getting the embryos and escapes to give the embryos to ship waiting at the dock. However, there is a problem with the weather and he gets lost. He exits his vehicle and is attacked and killed while the power is down.


The tour group is stalled in front of the tyrannosaur fences and the tour patrons are getting agitated. They are worried about the dinosaurs reaching the mainland and escaping into the jungle. They believe that the dinosaurs can breed even though the lab said all the dinosaurs are female and infertile. The control room is trying to find Nedry and also trying to get the park's security back online.

After this the main struggle for life and death begins. There are numerous deaths and exciting scenes where the characters are pushed to the limit. I'll let you read the book and enjoy these things yourself.

The book is well written and doesn't follow the chapter system. The book switches back between Grant and the kids, Ellie and Harding, and the control room. The character each have their positives and their negatives. In the end the strongest and wisest characters survive. The ending is quite surprising and is a real treat.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes dinosaurs or is interested in action packed books. The book is great and varies enough from the movie that it can be read even if you watched the movie a hundred times as the plot is quite different.

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