A NOTE ON THE SPOILERS
A while ago I got a comment tantrum from a semiliterate rando because apparently some people are too stupid to understand a SPOILER WARNING, so I thought I’d elaborate on my exact definition of a spoiler. I AM GOING TO SUMMARIZE THE ENTIRE BOOK, INCLUDING THE ENDING. Think of me as a very niche Wikipedia. If you have a problem with that, you are welcome to stop reading at any time. I don’t make money from this content. I don’t care how many people read it.
This is your legacy, Fedup: an extra line on an obscure book blog that probably doesn’t even have ten followers. It’s not exactly a Nobel prize, but it’s still quite a nifty little achievement. Your parents must be so proud. Please seek help.
The Lost World
Michael Crichton
You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be spoilers. Other reviews in this series can be found here. Increasingly feral Kindle notes are saved here.
I have to admit that this book was a surprise. I came to the book from the movie and had no idea what to expect except probably a lot of chaos theory, and in this I was not deceived. (Could’ve used less of that, Ian, tbph.) Unfortunately the anticipation of chaos theory did lower my expectations to a substantial degree, but, having finally read the book, I can safely say that it’s way better than the movie. That’s an insultingly low bar because the movie is terrible, though it still has a special place in my heart as my go-to when I want to watch dinosaurs eating people, but it is a genuine relief to be able to say that the book is good, mostly because I preemptively ordered a hardcover first edition to display impressively on my bookcase and really did not want to spend the rest of my life regretting it.
Four years after John Hammond engineered an ecological disaster, chaos theoretician Ian Malcolm is in a stage that he calls his next iteration. He still walks with a cane, but he did ultimately survive a near-fatal leg injury acquired during the events on Isla Nublar, to the probable disappointment of mathematics departments around the country. In the four years since Hammond’s rise and fall, InGen has gone completely bankrupt, and the scientists who managed to survive the island – paleontologist Alan Grant and paleobotanist Ellen “Ellie” Sattler Reiman – are legally bound to secrecy, incentivized by regular grant payments. As for Malcolm, he received two years’ worth of medical payments from InGen, and he has no interest in rehashing the past. He is therefore dryly annoyed to be targeted by Richard Levine, a trust fund kid and the most irritating paleontologist in the world, who is hell-bent on dragging Malcolm to Costa Rica to study the dinosaurs. Levine’s enthusiasm is infectious, however, and eventually the dour Malcolm begins to have exciting thoughts of figuring out the extinction of the actual dinosaurs via this living population.
The only problem is that the Costa Rican government has been working to destroy every dinosaur carcass that washes up on its shores, as the dinosaurs are associated with an outbreak of disease. Wanting to get to the main dinosaur population before it can be discovered and eradicated, Levine sets out for Costa Rica before his research equipment is fully prepared, telling no one and taking only a local man named Diego as a guide. They get to the island all right, but Diego is killed and eaten by a pair of chameleon-like Carnotaurus sastrei, while Levine is cornered by a pack of raptors. Back in California, Levine’s absence is noted by Kelly Curtis and R.B. “Arby” Benton, a couple of middle school kids who have been acting as Levine’s research assistants (he got slapped with community service after speeding in a school zone and was ordered to teach paleontology to the kids at said school, which he actually has been doing quite diligently). When he fails to return in time for a promised field trip, the kids meet up with Jack “Doc” Thorne, the engineer who has been building Levine’s field equipment. After an alarming phone call that seems to indicate that Levine is in serious trouble, Thorne, Malcolm, and the kids put together the available clues and realize he is most likely on Isla Sorna, also called Site B, where InGen ran the bulk of its breeding program.
With time seemingly running out and precious few options, Malcolm and Thorne set out for Isla Sorna, along with Eddie Carr, Thorne’s assistant; they also invite Sarah Harding, a young ethologist working in Africa, though she is reluctant and noncommittal. The kids were supposed to stay home, but they stow away in one of the trailers built by Thorne. Despite Thorne’s reservations about the shortened timeline and the untested equipment, they make it to the island in one piece and find Levine alive, well, and completely unappreciative of their rescue mission. After pissing off the entire rescue party, Levine sets them all to studying the dinosaurs, a task made easier when Arby – a computer whiz – manages to log into the old InGen LAN, giving them access to every camera on the island. They also learn that the island still hosts a rundown worker village and laboratory, both powered with still-working geothermal energy; and old paperwork informs them that the dinosaurs were known to suffer from a mysterious disease referred to as “DX,” which significantly impacted the successful birth rate.
Meanwhile, Lewis Dodgson – a proudly derivative man and the least ethical scientist in the world – learns of the Isla Sorna expedition after several months of relentless stalking, and, uncrushed by his failure with Nedry (as well as his failure to buy InGen equipment outright), sets out for the island with his long-suffering assistant, Howard King, and celebrity biologist George Baselton. En route they run into Sarah Harding, fresh from Africa, and offer her a ride in their boat, but Dodgson quickly ascertains that no one knows to expect her, and tries to dispose of her by throwing her overboard. Unfortunately for Dodgson, Sarah is the kind of woman who will walk twenty miles across a savannah completely alone while throwing rocks at lions to keep them from eating her, and she manages to swim to land, where she eventually connects with Malcolm’s party. She arrives just in time to watch with the rest as Dodgson begins to rob dinosaur nests. This goes okay with the maiasaurs, but all hell breaks loose at the tyrannosaur nest: King tramples a tyrannosaur chick and breaks its leg, Dodgson’s equipment fails, and Baselton assures the others that the rexes cannot see anything that doesn’t move, but is proven stunningly wrong when he is eaten alive. Dodgson and King manage to escape, but they are separated, and they never see each other again.
While Dodgson and King struggle separately to escape from the island from hell, the others inspect the tyrannosaur nest and find the injured chick. Against all common sense and professional advice, Eddie brings the chick back to the trailers, where Sarah and Malcolm set its leg with a detachable cast despite some serious reservations. The rest of the group takes shelter in the “high hide,” an observational hut built on a scaffold, from which they can only watch as King is hunted and killed by a pack of Velociraptors. Back at the trailers, Malcolm and Sarah treat the tyrannosaur chick just before they are attacked and pushed over a cliff by the adult tyrannosaurs. Sarah somehow manages to climb to relative safety with an injured Malcolm on her back because absolutely nothing will stop that woman, but the others aren’t so lucky: King’s raptors discover the candy wrappers carelessly dropped on the ground by Levine, and they attack the high hide, quickly killing Eddie. Arby seems lost as well when the raptors catch him in the high hide’s survival cage and roll him away, but he is later rescued by the adults. After Arby’s rescue, the group camps out in the abandoned general store, noting that the raptors seem strangely afraid to follow them into the village.
This unexpected sanctuary develops teeth when the adults realize that the village has been staked out by the Carnotaurus that ate Diego, and that their influence over the other dinosaurs only works at night. This is proven the following morning, when the raptor pack attacks the general store while the Carnotaurus are inactive. Despite the raptors, Sarah goes out in search of the one remaining car, which they hope will carry them to meet the helicopter that is scheduled to remove them from the island, but she is delayed first by a herd of unconcerned Pachycephalosaurus, then by Dodgson, who also wants the car. Fortunately for her, one of the adult rexes turns up just then, and she is perfectly positioned to kick Dodgson out from under the car, which she naturally does. The rex carries Dodgson back to its nest and feeds him alive to its chicks, including the one with the broken leg, while Sarah gets away with the car and makes it to the pick-up point; however, she arrives just as the helicopter is leaving. With that avenue of escape eliminated, Kelly logs into the InGen LAN and learns that there is a boat shed on the island, then finds a way for the group to escape just as the raptors break into the store. Sarah picks them up, and they make it to the shed, where they find a working boat and finally leave Isla Sorna for good.
As the island recedes behind them, Levine exults in this lost world and speculates that extinction-related research can continue thanks to InGen’s network of cameras, but Sarah and Malcolm tell him that the dinosaurs are in fact infected with a disease that shortens their lifespans and affects their brains. Though the InGen scientists managed to contain it to a degree, it spread again in their absence; thus, Sorna is currently able to support a carnivore population that normally would be considered unsustainable for the size of the island, and the adult dinosaurs are smaller than Malcolm and Levine had originally expected. The dinosaurs will eventually die off from this human-introduced disease, making Sorna completely useless as a research site. Frankly, I would argue that it was useless anyway because these are not real dinosaurs and this time period is not even slightly comparable to the original world of the dinosaurs and they cannot be taken as perfect carbon copies of their unwitting DNA donors, but I guess we’ve abandoned that angle.
Anyway, I liked the book, though it feels looser and somehow less focused than its predecessor. I even liked Malcolm, despite the chaos rants, which I have to admit I skimmed; I also liked the hilarious, no-nonsense Thorne, and I got used to Levine after a while. It was nice when he began to show signs of some slight humanity; at the very least he seems to care about the kids a bit, which kept me from hating him the way I hate Dodgson. On the other hand, I knew those candy wrappers were going to be a problem, and I am more than ready to boot his dumb ass over a cliff. After all the trouble he takes to make his presence on the island as antiseptic as possible, it seems very odd that he would be so careless with some candy wrappers. Even if he had no way of knowing that the raptors would develop a taste for chocolate (thanks, King), it surely would have been smarter for him to tuck those wrappers into a bag or a pocket. But I suppose that’s Levine: towering genius paired with a towering, untouchable hubris. Whatever the case, I’m crossing the street if I ever meet this dude in real life. (But also, did I laugh when he was whining about the little musclebound female that is Sarah Harding ordering his ass around and making him do Hard Things? Yes, I did.)
My favorite character was, of course, Sarah, who is exactly as musclebound as Levine describes her, iron-willed and survival-oriented. I am 100% with Kelly, who is a devoted Sarah Harding stan and is both intimidated and overjoyed to meet her idol in person. I love that Thorne notes Kelly’s admiration and is pleased with it: in his estimation, a girl could do far worse than admire Sarah Harding. I love it even more that Sarah takes the time to notice Kelly, to talk to her and coach her and encourage her. Towards the end, when Kelly shrugs off her role in their escape from the general store, Sarah tells her that she saved the lives of the men, and that she should never downplay her own accomplishments. And I just love her so much for that, because she is absolutely right. Women who behave rarely make history, and I really appreciate that Sarah actively encourages Kelly to pursue science and math, to be bolder and try things that seem impossible, to make noise and take up space. She is inspirational without being unrealistic, she leads by example, and she never asks Kelly to do anything that she herself would not do. That being said, I would have liked to have seen some resolution to Kelly’s fear of her mother’s creepy boyfriend, who is part of the reason she stowed away in the first place, but that is mentioned only once and never comes up again. But perhaps the newer, bolder Kelly will be able to deal with him, or at least to find ways of avoiding him. After an island full of toothy predators, maybe the boyfriend will seem less onerous. I certainly hope she’ll be okay; something tells me she will be.
As for Dodgson, this is a book that is completely free of John Hammond, so Dodgson has been promoted to Worst Character in his absence. Congratulations, Lew. I’d shake your hand if it hadn’t just gone down a tyrannosaur’s gullet. There is of course the scientific espionage and the plagiarism and the attempted murder, but I just don’t like Dodgson, even without all the nasty trappings. I had thought that he might have served as partial inspiration for the character of Peter Ludlow (who I for some reason thought was named Andrew until I looked him up just now), who in the movie makes it back to San Diego with the injured tyrannosaur chick and its enraged parent, and I was vastly relieved at the actual outcome of his egg-pirating quest. I was ready to hold a seance and have words with Crichton’s ghost if Dodgson had gotten off the island with two tyrannosaurs against all logic and physical impossibility, but he didn’t, so there’s no need to go ruffling up anybody’s spirit. There was a brief moment at the end where I was afraid that Dodgson would somehow weasel his way out of a very well-deserved death, given that the tyrannosaur does not kill him immediately; but here again, I should have had faith in Crichton, who never hesitates to punish his characters. Even if Dodgson has spent the last two books giving me angry fits, the payoff was so worth it and those tyrannosaur chicks were adorable, even as they were eating his face. (What can I say, I’m a sucker for tiny feathery things that totter around and squeak a lot.)
In conclusion, I am so glad I finally sat down and read this book. I would say that the humans were more frightening than the dinosaurs this go-round – probably intentionally, Crichton was nothing if not a purposeful writer – but the writing is good and the story is addicting. It starts off a bit slow, and I have never been a fan of Malcolm’s more technical soliloquys, even (or especially) when he’s right. Nevertheless, it gripped me almost from start to finish; and there is even a moment of poignant reflection at the end, when Thorne diverts Kelly from a crushing depression over Malcolm’s rarefied cynicism, telling her not to let Malcolm make her forget what is actually real. This is what I like about Crichton: I might agree with a lot of what Malcolm says, but I also appreciate that his is not the only perspective presented. He is not the ultimate arbiter on the universe; nor would he claim to be, though certainly he and Levine have shared some tearing arguments that have gotten them expelled, still arguing bitterly, from several restaurants. While I think Jurassic Park was tighter and more compelling for reasons that I cannot fully articulate, The Lost World is still an excellent and emphatic conclusion to the series. It leaves no room for a potential third book: the dinosaurs will eventually die, end of story. Or so I like to believe. Either way, I don’t regret buying that first edition and I highly recommend both books, and I will definitely be visiting this world again.
