Micro (Michael Crichton)

Title: Micro

Authors: Michael Crichton & Richard Preston

Released: 2011

Rating: 4.5/5

Basic Plot: Peter goes to Hawaii to get Nanigen to admit that they were responsible for his brother's death. In the process he (and his colleagues) are shrunk and encounter their world in a whole new and dangerous light.

No One is Safe
Through a majority of the book you think you know who can and can't be killed. But then someone dies (this spoiler is too good to ruin) and you realize that anyone can die. I love it in a book when you fear for everyone. While I love the Terminator series, you know John Connor is safe so you don't really fear for him when he gets in trouble (or at least not as much as you could). But when this person dies you get on the edge of your seat and worry for everyone (except Danny who is a whinny bitch).

A Little Like Jurassic Park in Theme
Both Jurassic Park and Micro have the same basic theme. It's the fact that nature can't be controlled because we can't even begin to understand it. In Jurassic Park that was shown when Jurassic Park shut down and the dinosaurs were released to do what they would. In Micro this is shown in a more "classic" way by shrinking the main characters and showing our world in a whole new light. It makes things that weren't dangerous to people normally, be more than a little dangerous when those people were shrunk.

Microbots and Shrunken People
Reading the start of this book I was reminded of Prey (another of Crichton's books that focuses on nanobots). Spoiler (that you'll easily figure out) the man was attacked by microbots. Luckily the book doesn't focus on the microbots a lot and instead focuses on the natural world as viewed by shrunken humans.

Final Thoughts
This was a breath of fresh air after Pirate Latitudes (Micheal Crichton's other book that was published post-posthumously). I was excited to see a complete story in this one, plus the end leaves it open to sequels (though Crichton usually didn't do sequels). There are some very adult moments in this book that are sexual (like the giant booby moment) or very violent (especially the final death scene).