Decided to listen to an audio book of Michael Crichton’s second most famous book and wow, I love Crichton, but be warned that audio book is probably the worst way to experience one of his science fiction novels. The narrator David Morse does a good job and his voice fits the atmosphere of the story, but due to the nature of the story the narrative is full of computer print outs, charts, sheets and other science stuff that is excruciating to hear read out line by line. This is true with Jurassic Park as well, but I read that in print format and the story flows so much better when you can just look at that stuff. This issue I had is specific to the audiobook and I didn’t factor it into my overall rating, because the story is quite good on its own.

Many others have pointed out the writing is very dry, and this is accurate. Welcome to Michael Crichton. This is hard science fiction. Even though the subject matter of a disease from outer space is fantastical, Crichton presents everything in a way that grounds the events in reality. There are lots of information dumps about bacteriology, viruses, medical terminology, scientific papers that are relevant to the plot, things of that nature. Some involve real scientists and some don’t. This is why I like Crichton so much - he grounds the plot in reality and makes the story believable even if the subject matter is pretty out there. I could definitely see why some people would dislike this for that same reason. The technical explanations slow down the plot considerably, but they were interesting enough to keep me on board, however if you’re not a science enthusiast, I could see this being hard to get through. Lots of goopy gross stuff happens in here too, mostly pertaining to how the disease affects its hosts. It does gnarly stuff to people’s bodies and it gets grimy when they start cutting them open and prodding them with medical instruments, but if you’re the kind of person this book is for it probably won’t bother you too much. Some gripes I had: the ending feels very rushed. Without spoiling anything, one of the main conflicts is resolved with a deus ex machina that comes out of nowhere. Another issue I had is that the characters are very flat. I couldn’t really tell them apart most of the time, they were all scientist guys or army guys and I think there was only one female character. This is not character driven at all, they are vehicles who do things so plot stuff can happen. I also felt the section where they go into the lab was way too drawn out, we get it, it’s a secret lab and they have to do all these special voice tests, scan their eyeballs, get poked with needles, etc. Hearing every step of that process was almost as excruciating as going through the physical myself. Overall very good book, just avoid audiobook versions of this.

I remember reading The Andromeda Strain years ago, probably in high school when I went on a Micheal Crichton kick. It's a very good, tightly-written look at what could happen, should something return to Earth with a deadly, non-Terrestrial microorganism attached. It's also not really something that should be read during a global pandemic, since that's the most likely outcome of Andromeda getting out.