I absolutely enjoyed this book. The only complaint I have is all of the swearing; and there was a lot of it. While this novel has been officially classified as an adult novel, I think it's also suitable for older teens. But anyway, other than the foul language, there's nothing wrong with this book in my eyes. It's wonderful! From the very beginning, and I mean from the very first chapter, you're waiting to see how events carry out and how things go wrong. And there is no question that things won't.Michael Crichton did an amazing job of instilling tension all throughout your body at particular intervals in the book. I won't divulge the actual happenings, but the chapter named "Aviary" was amazing! It was short but it brought so much tension into the book that I think the book lacked until that point. Up until then, Crichton kept you hooked with mostly curiosity but it wasn't the type that had you going just tell me already! It was more like, okay I want to see how they get out of this. What else is going to happen to Grant and the kids? Or Muldoon? "Aviary" was a short chapter but I count that as one of its strengths. It didn't drag along; it was on target. Part of me wished the chapter had been longer, but that's only because it gave me so much tension. I can literally remember how tense my whole body was. If the chapter had been any longer, the tension would have been lost.
Throughout the book you have the T-Rex popping up. Just when you think it's gone, it comes back to complicate matters. In my opinion, it was used to perfection. All while you read this book though, even before the power goes out, the moment you actually read about the adult Velociraptors, you get the feeling that they're the true menace. And they were. But Crichton waited until the precise moment to use them. He gave you little tastes of them that complicated matters beforehand but the characters didn't have to go head to head with them until the end. In my opinion, that too was smart and they were used perfectly.
About halfway through the book, our cast of characters have power problems. It's not long before they're fixed, or so we think. When we have about a hundred or so pages left things start going wrong again and it is this point in the book that I believe, is truly the major climax of the story. Everything else was building up to these last pages, getting ready to spot-light the Velociraptors.
