just my opinion/summary:
Honestly, it's hard to be critical on a best selling author like Crichton. After all, critics do get irritating after a while. But, when one comes to expect greatness, then runs into an average novel (or below average in this case), it is hard to not be disappointed.
Congo started off with a team exploring Africa getting destroyed by an unknown enemy. While, everyone is killed, some of it is caught on tape. The only thing they see (the control people in Houston, Texas, led by Dr. Karen Ross) is a huge shadow by the camera. After analyzing it on computer, they clear the image to what looks like a gorilla. A team goes to the Congo in Africa to inspect.
At the same time, in San Francisco, Peter Elliot owns a gorilla that has a 600+ sign language vocabulary. Her name is Amy. As it turns out, Amy is fond of finger painting. She has been drawing this city in what looks like the African jungle. Supposedly, by this city, Zinj, there are many rare blue diamonds. So, the team from Texas takes Peter and Amy along. The journey now begins...
After hiring Charles Munro as their guide, they enter the heart of Africa. On their way they face many trials, including attacking gorillas, volcanoes, natives, and revolutionaries.
Eventually, they get to the city and find some diamonds, but, at the same time, they're also trying to stay alive with deadly gorillas all around them. Read the book if you want to find out more. Although, I would save my money and borrow someone else's who got suckered into buying it.
First, let's establish common grounds. We all know the movie was a crying joke, a travesty, and a waste of money. This book is better. But not by much. And here's why...
What Congo lacked big time was characters. There were a total of five characters worth mentioning, but none worth remembering. They were developed terribly. They were all pawns to Crichton's informational mind. In most cases, that's all right. After all, in Airframe, you expect to read about technical Airplane data. In the two dinosaur books, you expect to here his opinion on dinosaurs. In Congo, Crichton *did* give his opinion on the Congo, BUT, on everything else too. One conversation led to another one that had absolute nothing to do with the first. It was hard reading it. Try to imagine yourself in the character positions and say a sentence out loud exactly as it is written. It comes out wrong. Not even a very smart person (which Crichton is) would talk this way. He should of added something in the characters to make them worth remembering. In about two weeks, you'll forget their names. In the little development that there was, here is a character summary:
Munro came off as a hard nose man who likes to rough it, but yet, very technical minded. Peter Elliot came off as an inept bumbling who cares more for his talking apes than the mission itself, and Ross came off as a... well, she came off as an irate, irrational, easily irritated woman. Amy came off as a 2-year-old.
The actual plot was very anti-climatic. Nothing worth remembering either, therefore nothing worth mentioning. Otherwise, there will be to many negatives in this review which leads to more hate email that I have to sort through which takes my precious time.
So why did we grade Congo with a C- rather than an F? Well.. as mentioned, I don't want hate mail. Also, because it was fairly realistic (other than the trained killer apes). There was much research put into it and if you have any interest on the subjects that Crichton tried to teach us on, you may be interested. Also, there were some half way amusing action scenes in this novel too. Perhaps to keep you from dozing off.
Over all, put this on the bottom of your Crichton must read list. Read Sphere or Jurassic Park instead. Much more entertaining, but educational at the same time.
