Where the Author Has Lots of Ideas

Next by Michael Crichton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is moderately fun to read, but not very satisfying overall. My least favorite of his books to date.

My biggest issue with the book is that it's not really a novel, or it barely qualifies if you squint. There are several overlapping and very distantly related stories that all have something to do with genetics, gene therapy, and the business of genetic research. There's a transgenic bird with his own story; a transgenic ape; a family whose genes are legally the property of a company; a criminal who wants to use genetic predisposition to defend himself; and people getting poorly-researched genetic therapy that's going wrong. Maybe a few more things, I forget.

The author also includes a bunch of newspaper clippings and magazine articles throughout, and I would have normally kind of liked it, but it all added up to a collection of ideas without a clear central plot. It felt like a bunch of short stories and scenes with their pages interleaved to give the illusion of a novel.

The closest to a main plot is the family on the run from bounty hunters sent by the company that has a patent on their genes, because they are very unique genes and the company has lost all of its cells. That has a thriller feel, with a mom and son trying to get out of town without leaving evidence of where they are and where they've been. it takes up the biggest chunk of the novel.

It's not enough. It's uneven and the plot is incomplete. Crichton makes it somewhat exciting anyway, so it's not a drag to read, but it feels like he's pulling something, palming off a bunch of unformed ideas as a novel. Not great, IMO.

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