** spoiler alert ** For a while I was unsure if I would manage to finish Prey. Between the annoying MC (which makes the choice of first person viewpoint a real strain) and the endless irrelevancies which intrude on the action, this managed to tick nearly every single one of my dislikes. From the awkward discussion about diapers onwards, there is a slow slide from mediocrity to sheer awfulness, culminating in some of the poorest work I have read from Crichton - admittedly I haven't yet had the nerve to pick up either State Of Fear or Next. The writing was so bad in places that I had to re-read paragraphs, pages, and in one instance the better part of an entire chapter, just so that I could follow the crawling story to the obvious conclusions along with the narrator.

The jokes aren't funny, the science is poor, and it seems that the characters operate as chess pieces to be moved around the plot rather than flesh and blood individuals who exist before the story picks up - not that it ever really picks up. One of the most painful instances of bad science, and an unforgivable element which makes no sense even within the context of the fiction, is the idea that enough of the nanotechnology could be gathered in one place to form a black cloud. I'm not sure he really understood just how many billions would be needed to form even a small vague shape, never mind a humanoid figure. he even fluffs an obvious "child in peril" moment, which is solved in the most unimaginative way that I nearly stopped reading there and then.

The aforementioned scene, in which the main character's baby girl is infected by the nanotechnology - is symptomatic of the entire endeavor. It is a thread which is introduced in an overly long sequence, with hints of what could be a decent conspiracy peppered through the resolution, but is solved in such a way that not only does it negate any threat the technology could pose, it also makes later action taken by the characters seem extraordinarily stupid. If they have a rudimentary level of understanding about the threat (which, given the fact that it is an area which both parents are made aware of on multiple levels, they SHOULD have), they should have exploited the weakness as soon as they could have. It also glosses over what happens to a body - especially a child's - when the nanotechnology is forcibly ripped out via powerful magnets.

No matter where I look, the book is filled with one misstep after another. One to avoid.