Product Description

The new thriller from Michael Crichton, one of the most famous authors in the world, will be the most exciting, anticipated publication of Christmas 2006. Is your loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? It's 2006: do you know who all your children are? Do you know humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes? And why does an adult human being resemble a chimp foetus? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction -- is it worse than the disease? Ever want to design your own pet? Change the stripes on the fish in your aquarium? Ever think to sell your body fat -- or donate it to charity? Or sell your eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars? Did you know one fifth of all your genes are owned by someone else? Come to think of it, could you and your family be pursued cross country just because you happen to have certain genes in your body? Welcome to our genetic world. Fast, furious, and out of control. This is not the world of the future -- it's the world right now. Most of the events in this book have already happened. And the rest are just around the corner. Get used to it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #267752 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Review
Praise for 'Next': 'A wonderful farrago, energetically stirring up a lot of scientific, medical, business and legal issues! marvellous.' Evening Standard Praise for 'State of Fear': 'A gripping, impeccably researched thriller!we don't get much politically engaged fiction these days. Here is a fine example.' Evening Standard 'Exciting!a master storyteller.' Sunday Telegraph 'Terrific fun. The pages whip by.' Independent 'An enviromental adventure of truly global proportions!it's intelligent, readable and guaranteed to get the grey matter going.' Mirror 'An action-packed page-turner.' Daily Mail 'An entertaining thriller stimulating debate.' Time Out Praise for 'Prey': 'One of the most ingenious, inventive thriller writers around! another high-concept treat!written in consummate page-turning style!fascinating.' Observer 'This is Crichton on top form.' The Times Praise for 'Prey': 'Mixing cutting-edge science with thrills and spills, this is classic Crichton.' Daily Mirror 'Reading Crichton is like taking a speed-reading course, your eyes flying across the page because you're completely gripped and desperate to know what's going to happen next.' Time Out

Sunday Times
`Crichton has certainly done his research... his alarm is hard to
dispute... compelling... extremely funny.'

Mail on Sunday
`A satirical black-comedy thriller... Crichton writes likes Tom Wolfe on
speed... completely brilliant... top form.'

Customer Reviews

Lost the plot?
I am a great fan of Crichton's books, and I don't want to describe this as a bad book by any means, but I can't honestly review it as a great book.
This seems to be a personal open letter of complaint against the Biotech industry. There is no plot as such, but a dozen or so loosely connected stories covering various horror scenarios of genetic modification.
The transgenic parrot is such a painful attempt at comic relief that it beggars belief.
Anyway, I did read the book within 24 hours of getting it, and enjoyed the pace and character situations, but I'm not in a hurry to recommend it to anyone.

Bit of a let down
I absolutely love every Michael Crichton book I've ever read, and was so excited when this came out. However I feel quite let down, it didn't have a really good story like Timeline, or Airframe, the characters jumped from one to the other too much, and you had to keep thinking, 'now who's he again'. The plot was disjointed and I felt like I was being preached to too much.
There were bits that were excellent, and it wasn't completely awful, just not as good as his other books.
Read Jurassic Park and you'll see how good he can be, whilst still warning us about the misuse of genetics.

Interesting but not intriguing
Next is not a typical Crichton novel. It's full of the high tech, cutting edge science of genes and how their misuse in medical procedure will affect the world we live in. The central theme is very sound and will keep you captivated. This is just as well, since there is no strong plot line to keep you reading. There are too many characters, very vaguely (and improbably) connected, all with connections to the gene modification industry or affected by it in some way. Next is not a book that can be picked up and put down since it's difficult to keep up with the plethora of story-lines, and because only the animal based strands stand out, it is difficult to remember where the other threads are going - in fact, there are quite a few dead ends. Crichton is shoehorning in stories to emphasize his viewpoint on the wayward use of gene experimentation, it's interesting reading, but there is none of the compulsive reading that he has created previously.