Jack of Harts

I recently read Jurassic Park for the first time, after watching the three Jurassic Park movies, and of course the recent Jurassic World. After finishing it, and loving it very much, I decided it was time to read the sequel, The Lost World. And now having read it, I can see where much of the inspiration for the movie sequels came from.

The book starts similarly to both of the sequels, with some differences. Ten years have passed, Ingen is dead, and Doctor Malcolm has a steady job. He also has a steady limp thanks to the piece the T-Rex took out of him. Doctor Grant is remaining silent about the Park incident while continuing his scientific work, and his former student Ellie is married with a little boy. Or is it two? I can’t remember off the top of my head. Doctor Malcolm has a couple of really good students in one of his classes who assist him, a tall skinny girl, and a young black kid. They are both geniuses in their own rights, and are very important to the survival of everybody thanks to those genius minds of theirs throughout the story. In the movie, they are amalgamated into one black girl who failed at gymnastics.

Like both sequel movies, the action soon goes to Ingen Site B, where the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park were created, and now roam without anybody knowing about it. An expedition to find and study the island is started, and Malcolm gets dragged into it. I won’t spoil anymore, beyond saying that many scenes from the movies do come from the books. Many scenes were created out of whole cloth, and most of the story was invented for the movies, but you can see where the ideas for many of the things that happened in the sequels, even Jurassic World, came from. The Lost World novel has a lot of cool things going on in it, and was ruthlessly mined for the Jurassic sequels.

The best way to describe it is that the Jurassic Park novels are one story. The Jurassic Park movies are another story. They share some scenes, and some ideas, but they are completely different in story and universe. If you have watched every movie, you have not seen the story put forth in the Jurassic Park novels. Jurassic Park movie and novel are close, but not the same. The Lost World novel and movie are not close at all, and nowhere near the same, despite sharing some scenes and some characters. And as much as I loved Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, the novels are far superior.

I thoroughly enjoyed Jurassic Park: The Lost World, the novel. I give it two T-Rex-sized thumbs up. Watch the T-Rex wiggle his little hands in approval. He agrees with me, and hopes you all come by for a visit. That may just be because he’s hungry though, so approach him with all due caution. And maybe a rocket launcher just in case. 😉