captain's logue

Author: Michael Crichton
Title: Prey
Year of Publication: 2002

After reading Prey I realized that I had a smile on my face, it took me a minute to figure out why but then realized that I enjoyed the book. (Sometimes I don’t realize what is going on lol. XP) Michael Crichton has such a command over the pen and paper it is an enjoyable experience to read his work and I encourage anyone who has not read  this or any book by him to do so quickly.  I am obligated at this point to give you a disclaimer, for you see this book its chalk full of awesome. You have been warned.

Michael Crichton just happens to be one of my favourite authors. He has written Jurassic Park and Disclosure among others, but these just happened to be so good that they have been made into movies and famous ones at that. (Who hasn’t seen Jurassic Park?) He is also the creator of the show E.R. which I am sure most of you have heard of. One thing I like about Michael is since he has a PHD in medicine he knows what he is talking about and some of his other books like The Andromeda Strain are better because of his knowledge of biology.

Now I should probably tell you a little about Prey. The main character, Jack Forman, is an out-of-work software programmer with a wife who works for a technology company called Xymos Technology. He takes care of his 2 children whilst his wife works. Lately she has been almost non-existent in their lives spending all her time at work leaving Jack wondering if she is having an affair. Xymos is currently making nanobots for use as a small but large camera and to make it work they used a program called Pred/Prey which Jack had created. They call him up to help them with the programming when they run into difficulties but when he gets there he discovered the horrible truth of the situation. They had lied; there was nothing wrong with his programming the nanobots are evolving! (dun dun duuunn)

Rating time, a occasion full of happiness and glad tidings in the land of books, during this happy time I am delighted to say that Prey deserves 4.25 stars. One of the things that I really enjoyed about this book is the indeapth explanations of the programming of the code to the production of the nanobots. It really helps toward a fuller understanding of the story. Another reason why Prey deserves this rating is the ending which I won’t give away but I will tell you that it’s full of suspense and action. The third reason is the characters, they are all very well written. There are several programmers at the Xymos building who made me laugh during the description of them, they are a perfect example of stereotypical programmers. The reason why I gave Prey a 0.75 deduction is although I like the thorough explanations they could have been a little shorter and my favorite character gets killed off  but it was still an excellent read. If you would like to buy Prey by Michael Crichton, it is available at Amazon.ca,
, Amazon.com
and chapters along with Barnes & Noble.