Micro by Michael Crichton

I finished another book recently. It was Micro by Michael Crichton. The book was unfinished at the time of Crichton's death and Richard Preston also gets author credit. Like Pirate Latitudes this book was published posthumously.

It was ok. I wouldn't call it his best work. In the book a group of graduate students in biology go to Hawaii on a recruiting visit from the Nanigen company. Alas they stumble upon a dark secret of the founder Vin Drake. The evil Drake uses the Nanigen shrinking machine to make the students about an inch tall and cuts them loose in the rainforest to perish. The novel is the story of their struggles to survive at that size in a hostile world; and the efforts of Drake to cover up his vile deeds mostly by committing more murders.

The best parts were the descriptions of being small. The micro world is quite dangerous and the shrunken humans are threatened by ants, centipedes, spiders, birds, bats, wasps and even ordinary rainfall. There's a real sense of danger reading those descriptions.

There's lots of plot twists and unexpected characters appearing to keep it interesting. Like several Crichton titles there's the who will survive? element that he also uses in Prey, State of Fear, Jurassic Park, etc.

It's still too bad Crichton is passed away. A great writer of our time. Well I've now completed the final books in his career. There's still a smaller number left of the earlier Crichton titles I haven't finished yet.