I just finished reading Michael Crichton’s Next. Unlike many of his previous novels, Next is not ready-made for a movie. In fact, it was a somewhat jarring reading experience in that the main character is… indiscernible. There are so many characters and settings flopping around, it is difficult to latch on to any. Truly, several times I found myself flipping backwards to remind myself who a character was.

The ‘villain’, in as much as there is one, disappears for over a hundred pages before reasserting himself into the story. Oddly enough, he was one of the more sympathetic characters before his long absence and quite suddenly is amoral, bordering on sociopathic, when he returns.

The main dilemma of the story is not introduced until well past the halfway point of the book. The ancillary character who becomes the closest thing there is to a protagonist is introduced early on, but she doesn’t develop enough to capture our interest until the downhill run at the end of the book.

Lest it seem like I am doing some unfair author-bashing, I should pause here and point out that I am an avid fan of Michael Crichton. I’ve read every one of his fictional books and thoroughly enjoyed most of them. Most of the time that I was reading Next I was enjoying it, eagerly anticipating a satisfying culmination to the almost random mash up of characters and events throughout the book.

Sadly, it never came to be. There were hints of an anti-environmentalist tone, like his previous work, State of Fear. But unlike State of Fear, they never coalesced into anything solid. In many ways, this book read like scraps of ideas from past Crichton novels – the strong female legal-eagle from Disclosure, the ground breaking biologist from Andromeda Strain, the intelligent ape from Congo, the nature-defying scientist from Jurassic Park, the image and money driven CEO from Swarm.

Maybe Crichton had run out of ideas. Sadly, unless there is some unfinished manuscript waiting to be scooped up, this is the last work we will ever see from the late author. If you enjoy science fiction with a firm grounding in reality, I would recommend any of Crichton’s previous works, but give Next a pass.

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