Prey (it never happens to you) (Prey - Michael Crichton)

Name: theediscerning

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Product:	Prey - Michael Crichton
Date:	13/02/06 (193 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonable techno-thriller

Disadvantages: A bit too long

Prey concerns a week in the life - oh so possibly the last, of course - of our Everyman hero, Jack. At the outset he's a stay-at-home dad, forced out of his job in high-tech computer software, he's tending two angst-ridden pre-teens and his new baby Amanda. He's full of knowledge as to how to get them to eat, do their homework, behave generally - knowledge his wife Julia seems to be getting more and more ignorant of.

She's still working, and is taking to staying away from home for more and more hours every day. When she does return, she immediately showers something away, and arguments are all that happen. Jack soon suspects an affair.

However a 500 page techno-thriller can't carry on like this - there has to be some mysterious threat. And Amanda is its subject. Within a few minutes her body is swarming with irritant-looking blotches. These disappear very quickly, only for her to turn a uniform bruised purple colour. At the click of a switch, however, this goes away.

But what is the cause of this? The mysterious white box under her crib that Jack discovers? And what will come of the request Jack gets to go back to work, at the very place that might - if she has an alibi - be the very building Julia's spending all her time?

Michael Crichton is of course the inventor of Jurassic Park, several other very successful techno-based airport doorstop thrillers, and is at least partly responsible for inventing George Clooney. Within these covers, he includes a small essay as introduction, and four pages of bibliography to prove that Prey, although four years old now, still features some cutting edge hi-tech science in its fantasy fiction.

The evil here, caused by its Frankensteinian creators, is nanotechnology - the creation of the ultra-small robotic type of molecule. They're controlled by almost theoretical computer programmes, that take analogies from nature to work. Computers use processors and work procedures that live under evolutionary laws - those more successful in solving the problem, or achieving the goal, thrive, and those 'ideas' that don't get stopped. Processors act as swarming, hive-building social insects, that cooperate and problem solve together. Programmes go under the suspicious-sounding PRED/PREY name, where they behave as predators, with goals their prey, and circle solutions and find them like big cats or something.

The analogies certainly add to the feel of the book, and the whole way the nanobots come to operate follow such a mood to good effect. It's just a pity, if perhaps inevitable, that the way all this is explained to us by Jack's first person narrative is a little clunky at times, to say the least. It all seems fairly understandable, and at least is partly plausible.

However there certainly are other flaws in the writing. The first hour or so, where the domestic normality is established, just goes on for far too long, and at too much detail, with Jack being the inverse stereotype of the housewife, able and willing to discuss nappy rash with his peers. It doesn't ease the reader in, more than ease her /him to sleep.

Details regarding our hero are thin on the ground, and seem to be added in when the author thinks of them. 50 or so pages in a clunky plot device needs him to be wearing glasses - news to us. Having just enjoyed a helicopter flight, we then learn he's terrified of heights.

When Jack arrives at the secret desert facility run by Julia's company Xymos, and gets the guided tour with added commentary about what went wrong and what he's supposedly been brought back in to put right, he might hear some friendly advice and detail. What we hear is just the few plot devices needed to solve the problem, enabling us to write the ending ourselves 150 pages early. Shame.

However the writing does get quite engaging towards the middle, and the later pages still have some turnability. (Elsewhere it really does seem a bit too long, say 10%.) Thankfully it never gets too ridiculous, although some of the nanobot behaviour is a bit much. To its credit that allows for one of the two more don't-look-over-your-shoulder moments.

This success at reining in the excess of the possible scenario is also enabled by the insular setting of the novel, which never gets as far as mentioning the global threat that might exist - even if the back cover might. Again, there are plusses and minuses for this - you get the added is-she-or-isn't-she regarding the wife, Julia, but you might not be all that keen on that anyway.

Of course, theediscerning isn't really the intended audience for a book like this, and as a result, it'll never get a great appreciation. However, there is some enjoyment to be had from Prey. The characters are a bit bland, faceless and interchangeable, but that's a given with this genre. Jack is a bit average, but if he can save the world, get back in time for dinner and never need the toilet that's fine by us.

And what you think may be plot-holes while reading the book may actually all be explained - there's even an excuse for the threat to never really leave Xymos. All this makes for a consistent read, which is about all we can hope for. It won't set the world alight, but for this sort of entertainment it's not too bad.


* Add a star to the rating if you're a fan of this sort of thing. The recommendation assumes you are.*

Summary: Rather woolly but engaging airport novel gets damned with faint preys.