By Michael Crichton and Richard Preston

Rating: 2/5

Three Word Summary: Tiny Jurassic Park

I’m a big Michael Crichton fan; I’ve read most of his previous works, from Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain to Sphere and Timeline. He’s written some of the best sci-fi thrillers of the past few decades.

Which is why I was sad to hear that he passed away in 2008. But apparently he had a few manuscripts tucked away on his laptop for living authors like Richard Preston to finish and publish posthumously.

Micro was published in 2011, three years after Crichton’s death. Which leads me to believe that it was little more than an original idea that had to be fully flushed out by Preston. While it resembles Crichton’s previous works in genre, it has very little in the way of his originality and skilled writing.

The premise is strikingly similar to Jurassic Park, if you replace the dinosaurs with insects. Basically a group of graduate students are shrunk while doing research for a dubious robotics company in Hawaii and get lost in the tiny wilderness. They must face terrible odds and giant ants if they are to survive (semi-spoiler: which most don’t).

Unlike Jurassic Park, perhaps Crichton’s most well-known work, Micro is too cliched and predictable. The characters are flat and boring. Several characters were obviously doomed to die and I wasn’t overly upset when that happened.

The storyline limped through a few unsurprising twists and several graphic bug fight scenes. The science that Crichton’s work so famously relies upon revolved primarily around the insects and their miniscule environment. It was an interesting idea that never fully developed.

Ultimately, this may have been one novel concept that should have been allowed to die with its author.