8. The Terminal Man

8. The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton (5/9/2011 - 5/11/2011)

Much as I love many, many books by Michael Crichton, I'd skip this one if I could do it again and just re-read The Andromeda Strain.  The book assumes a lot of information and at times it seems like there are whole sections that are left unsaid for the reader to figure out -- but since Crichton is literally writing about brain surgery, it's rather difficult to just get it from the clues. On top of that, there is a lot of background information that can be difficult to pick through and figure out what's relevant AND a lot of action happens off-page.  The ending is very abrupt and does not offer a lot of closure.

The story itself is interesting, as most of Crichton's are: a man suffers from brain damage that causes sudden, extremely violent episodes that he has no memory of but during which he has seriously injured others. A team of doctors attempt a novel surgery on his brain to circumvent the seizures but this backfires and makes everything worse than before.  The story is set up over the course of 5 days, a similar formula to The Andromeda Strain and others of Crichton's previous works.  Unfortunately, this novel just doesn't engage readers like his other works do -- often I finish Crichton feeling like I've really learned something (Jurassic Park: chaos theory and dinosaurs, The Andromeda Strain: space and adaptation, Congo: don't train monkeys as guards, etc), but this time around I did not have that feeling.

The book wasn't hard to read and it certainly wasn't bad, but I would have to say that it's probably the worst Crichton I've read.  Perhaps, if one is interested in the functioning of the brain, it might be better, but otherwise I'd read his other novels.