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Prey  By  cover art

Prey

By: Michael Crichton
Narrated by: George Wilson
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Publisher's summary

In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles (micro-robots) has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive.

It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour.

Every attempt to destroy it has failed.

And we are the prey.

As fresh as today's headlines, Michael Crichton's most compelling novel yet tells the story of a mechanical plague and the desperate efforts of a handful of scientists to stop it. Drawing on up-to-the-minute scientific fact, Prey takes us into the emerging realms of nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence in a story of breathtaking suspense.

Prey is a novel you can't pause.

Because time is running out.

©2002 Michael Crichton (P)2002 HarperCollinsPublishers, Inc.; 16 9; 2002 Recorded Books, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Crichton is the master of the sci-tech thriller, and nowhere is that more evident than in his latest page-turner, a scary, wild ride that is, without a doubt, his best in years." (Booklist)

"From the opening pages of Crichton's electrifying new thriller...readers will know they are in the hands of a master storyteller." (Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Prey

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2,912
  • 4 Stars
    1,837
  • 3 Stars
    854
  • 2 Stars
    222
  • 1 Stars
    124
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2,683
  • 4 Stars
    1,251
  • 3 Stars
    483
  • 2 Stars
    109
  • 1 Stars
    65
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2,444
  • 4 Stars
    1,280
  • 3 Stars
    632
  • 2 Stars
    171
  • 1 Stars
    81

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Prey for it to end!

Prey is by far one of the worst novels I have ever subjected myself to. The author once again proves he is master of little more then a clever thought. This "germ" of a thought turns into a story about a dimwitted computer genius (and his "crack" team of super-hero scientists) battling clouds. The character building is so poor that the listener is challenged to care about anyone (the hero, the villian or even the innocent children). Please, I "Prey" do not waste your time. You're better off watching a Jim Carey movie.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Godawful 2...

Further, I wanted to smack the main character as others have stated. For someone who should be so educated, he dismisses all sorts of bizarre events.
(Remember the cloak, fellow already heard-it's?)
There are tons of red herrings and questions that the main character just decides can't be answered at the end...leaving the reader/listener unsatisfied.
I found the main character to be inconsistent with a technology professional and the research for the book seemed to touch on pseudo or glam technology rather than real science.

I am of the mind that this book was dictated and designed as a screenplay...then converted to novel form. It's a poor book and an even worse audiobook. It astonishes me that this tripe has remained on the bestseller list. For beach reading, you can do a crossword and get greater satisfaction.

Now.

I feel better.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

A novel you CAN put down.

As a fan of this genre, I have read other of Crichton's books (Timeline, The Andromeda Strain, Jurrasic Park, Sphere, Congo, etc.) but liked this one the least of all of his books. While I liked the book, I found myself anxious to get through it and move on to my next audiobook.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Chrichton at his worst

Unbelievable, poorly crafted story. We have to hear the author drone on about nano-tech for 5 minutes before we can hear the book. The story starts out okay, but then moves directly into unbelievable. The dumb protagonist suffers repeated damage in one day but continues to show no signs of harm. At the end of the story, the author assumes we are too dumb to have figured things out on our own and goes into boring explication. The narrator can't keep his voices straight, and the background noises of flipping pages (or something simiar) are really annoying.

I love action-adventure fiction, but this didn't cut it for me.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Hard to finish.

It had promise. Crichton is a good writer but he kept hitting me with inconstancies. Anything that can keep up with a running rabbit can travel in a 15 knot wind. And, when you have a chance to kill the bad guy, kill him! Don?t walk up to him and strike up a conversation for the sake of dramatics. There was something like this in almost every chapter and it got very frustrating. These kinds of things make me feel resentful that I was tricked into starting a book that had too many situations that were fit for a comic book.

And, Mr. Crichton, human eyes don?t have a tapetum lucidum so they don?t glow in a flashlight beam.

After I finished Prey, I immediately started listening to a Douglas Adams book to cheer me up. It did.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Wait for the movie

Good story but read more like a script for his next movie

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Disappointing

Given the author and the plot, this book sounded like a winner. Character development took too long and much of it was inconsequential. The dialog was often awkward. There was gratuitous swearing by one character in what seemed like an overly obvious attempt at defining a personality, but instead was just annoying. The basic premise is creative and certainly had more potential.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Unfortunate

I have read seven of Michael Crichton‘s books before this. I truly appreciate this author and think he is incredibly gifted. Having said that, this book was not good. It was almost as if it was half written and they published it anyway. Poor character development, loose storyline, weak plot. It had the typical makings of another great book by Crichton, but failed to deliver.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Great!!

What made the experience of listening to Prey the most enjoyable?

This was a perfect combination of story and narrator

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

Absolutely! It was a great story that had me feeling anxious and enthralled.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

The swarm is coming

Any additional comments?

This was my first book by Crichton and I really enjoyed it. I found that sci-fi aspect was still grounded in reality and that made it feel like something that could actually happen in real life, which makes it just a bit better.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

eat, PREY, run!

If you could sum up Prey in three words, what would they be?

you're not safe...

What did you like best about this story?

classic Crichton! i've always loved how he sews together science with science fiction, and Prey is another example in a long list of great Crichton books (along with Jurrasic Park, Sphere, Andromeda Strain, etc).

you can tell he did his homework on the technology behind this story.

What about George Wilson’s performance did you like?

he did an excellent job creating the different characters and he made it easy for me to keep them separated in my head. kudos to him.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

i always have a tough time answering this question, as i've listened to several books since this one. but if you are a fan of Crichton, then this book will not let you down.

Any additional comments?

highly recommended, and since his (unfortunate) passing, i relish anything i can read/listen to by Crichton.

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2 people found this helpful