Sphere

Another fast and thrilling ride with hidden factoid jewels throughout related to psychology, biology and physics. Loved it!

"In studies of group dynamics he had long verified the truth of the old statement 'Three's a crowd.' For a high tense situation, groups of three are inherently unstable. Unless everybody had clearly defined responsibilities, the group tended to form shifting allegiances, two against one."

I picked this up while I was under the weather and planned to read only few pages to see if I'd like the novel. But then, I suddenly found myself on 150th page and I was completely hooked. This is a fun, fast-paced sci-fi thriller about a mysterious spacecraft discovered deep in the belly of the Pacific Ocean. I really enjoyed the underwater expedition, the bickering between the characters Ted and Harry (they made me laugh out loud more than once and I wished there was more of it). I was especially fascinated by the author’s exposition of topics like evolution, space-time curvature, cosmology, psychology, mathematics and marine biology in layman’s terms. My only complaint is that a few parts of the book were too mundane for my taste. We spend so much time with the scientists in the underwater habitat that I found myself wanting the author to move me somewhere else. I really feel the book could’ve been about a 100 pages shorter if the author’s intention was to make us feel stuck in one place. Overall, though, I had a great time with this one. It was immersive, entertaining and cinematic. Reading Michael Crichton always feels like watching a blockbuster movie play out in my head! 4 stars!

Michael Crichton can do no wrong!!

I first read Sphere in paperback not long after it was published. As a male, avid SciFi reader at the time, it didn't seem out of the ordinary to me and was a bit spooky. I must admit, I never saw the movie and I even recommended it to my book club since most members are much younger than me. Thought it would be good to get into some 'old school' SciFi authors. Man, was I in for an awakening! This time around, I experienced the audiobook and I'll go ahead and say the reader was a bit over-dramatic for my tastes. At times, I had to just turn it off because he got a little overbearing. But that wasn't the worst of it. I like to think I've grown with the times over the years and I think it helped me awaken to the fact that this book is dripping with misogyny. Why didn't I see that back in the day? Crichton's treatment of Beth Halpern was really unforgiveable. It really made me cringe this time around. I mean, the premise of the team is that they are all tops in their fields, but Beth comes across as moody, bossy, and that old male assigned trope - "hormonally challenged." Aside from this, the book sucked in other ways. First, the team bickers entirely too much. I understand academic infighting in a university setting, but these folks are all from different disciplines - yet they are almost always downplaying and down-putting their colleagues on this mission. Since the character development is fairly shallow, we don't really get a true reason for this. Sure, Harry has some mental ghosts and a chip on his shoulder and Ted is a whiny "engineer-turned-TV-personality." But every scientific team I've known about gives at least some deference to their counterparts and respect for what that person knows and has contributed during career. In Sphere, they seem to just hate each other all the time and go off doing things on their own with no consideration for the opinions of others. Finally, as one of my book club members put it, Norman is really an unreliable narrator in the story. So, I've finished this book twice and at this time, I couldn't recommend it to anyone. Watch the movie instead - I'm sure it is at least entertaining as a horror flick.

Not bad, Michael Crichton. But definitely not your best. But that's okay.

This book was thoroughly enjoyable. It's much easier to read than, say, Timeline perhaps, with its complicated theories of parallel universes. However, it was not so easy that it seemed infantile. It was a quick read, but it was full of thrills and unexpected surprises. The characters had the nice depth and range of most Crichton characters, where you get pleasantly invested but I wasn't sobbing when difficulties befell them (which is appropriate for this type of novel).

My only real criticism is that I thought the ending was overly simplistic. I won't go into spoilers, but I really thought that Crichton could have done better, even though it tied in perfectly with the introduction and rising action.

Overall, check it out, especially for vacation. Enjoy!