Week 32
God it’s??? August??? Somehow???
I feel like these intros are always just me being confused about the passage of time, but that’s a fairly consistent mood for me tbh. Anyway, it’s my birthday soon so…yay?
This week: THREE SEEKING STARS by Avi Silver and JURASSIC PARK by Michael Crichton
#48) THREE SEEKING STARS by Avi Silver
Ahhhhh big BIG found family feels!!!
I really loved this story. It’s been long enough since I read its predecessor, TWO DARK MOONS, that I’d forgotten quite a few of the details, but I had no problem sinking back into this, getting reacquainted with the characters and the world.
THREE SEEKING STARS continues the story of Sohmeng, separated from family and home, now finding her life among a group of lizards called the sãoni, and her new partner Hei. With a newcomer from an invading empire, Ahn, they try to find help for Sohmeng’s people, and rebuild old connections.
I genuinely wasn’t expecting the amount of emotions this book brought up in me, but I was absolutely along for the ride. It’s so rare to see something that engages in questions of identity and redemption in such an in-depth, compassionate way, as well as questions of what it means to be family. I loved it all, I highly recommend it, and I can’t wait to see how the cycle concludes.
#49) JURASSIC PARK by Michael Crichton
So, the original Jurassic Park movie is one of my favourite movies. It’s got everything: action, suspense, dinosaurs, Laura Dern…I love it.
Reading the book version was definitely an interesting experience, and generally, I really enjoyed it. I would say there’s things I think it did better than the movie, and also things that I think the movie improved on.
Perhaps the biggest thing that I think the movie helped was the personalities of the kids, who I believe are aged up for the film, because dear god, they are annoying in the book. Lex, in particular, has very little to do except scream and cry and not understand the seriousness of the situation, meanwhile Tim, who’s at least more capable, yells at her at every given opportunity. One almost wishes the dinos would eat them. ALMOST.
It’s interesting the different pacing of the book, as well. The film very much involves things going bad, staying bad, and perhaps even getting progressively worse. In the book, the characters go through decently long stretches where it seems like things might be okay.
This, it seems, goes back to the book having a slightly different raison d’etre than the movie: it puts much more emphasis on the fact that Jurassic Park was always going to be a failed endeavour, that even despite the happenstance of Dennis Nedry + storm, they were always going to lose control of the dinos. That, in fact, they already had, though I’m still a little unclear on how the raptors were able to breed secretly.
The book also takes a more philosophical tone in a lot of ways, mostly through Ian Malcolm, who decries scientists’ efforts to control the natural world and humans’ self-centredness. This got a little preachy for my tastes at times (and feels a little like Crichton on a soap box of his own), but it certainly raised interesting points.
All in all, I enjoyed the experience of reading this. It definitely still has the tension I loved from the movie, and quite a few memorable moments and details; despite knowing where the story was going, I found myself having a hard time putting the book down, which is a pretty substantial element in my opinion. Definitely would recommend checking this out, and I’m interested to read more of Crichton’s work.