Airframe
by Michael Crichton
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Book Reviews of Airframe
Book Review: Airframe-fuselage and wing
Summary: 4 Stars
Michael Crichton is an interesting writer, this does not make him a good writer. There is the question of plausibility, often connected to the probability of coincidences, and Michael Crichton strains my reasoning on almost everything he writes. Consequently there is one overiding concern, to believe ir not. I find I prejudge him, I regard each of his stories as I would a cartoon, it just can't happen. Then I throw out all my beliefs, settle back, and enjoy the book. This I can do, if I do not read the book as I would a text book, but absorb the story without criticism of reality but only inteested in the action, then I am satisfied. Crichton does cover a lot of ground, he does introduce new concepts, or old concepts in a new setting, and I do not question whether he knows what he is talking about. If I come to a resounding error or an implausible situation, or even a a character acting not according to his character as set up, I skip over it, knowing Crichton wlll inevitably introduce such elements into his story. If it happens to be some scientific point I am not familiar with I have no problem. I have already decided not to quibble over such implausibilities.
Airframe was full of them. I spent most of my working years associated with such aircraft companies, and he was generally on target but he also made many misstatements. I am not going to enumerate them, many of them helped the story line and some were essential to the plot. Why quibble, the main facts were true. The wing is the soul of the aircraft, no manufacturer would use wing offset as a means to obtain a contract, also the U. S. government must approve any offset anyhow. So let us assume that the wing could be manufactured overseas and imported back into the U. S. for assembly. On with the story. Again, contracts, before signing. are highly classified so how did the union know? Ignore it, on with the story. That is how I read most of Michael Crichton. I have written criticisms of some of his other stories, now I have revealed how I am able to read them amd enjoy them.
Most of his stories are fast paced and action packed but he has trouble ending them, or I think his endings are weak, compared to the action in the story and he often leaves unanswered questions about some of the action. However criticizing the endings is difficult to do without revealing the ending and ruining the story for anyone reading the review. Surprisingly, the ending to "Airframe" is pretty good, even the payoff to Casey is not too bad. It was a good read.
Book Review: Dr. Crichton soars in this mystery novel
Summary: 4 Stars
As an avid reader, I was very reluctant to pick up this book. I had received it as a gift from my parents when I was younger. I was a reader, but not really into Michael Crichton at the time, more so into John Grisham and the likes. I knew Crichton had written Jurassic Park and Congo but that was about all. I was in my early teens when Airframe came out so his novels like Disclosure and Rising Sun were not on my radar being very adult-geared. Anyway, after about four years of sitting on my shelf I decided to pick this book up and read it. Wow...
Jurassic Park, Sphere, Congo, The Lost World...Airframe? Airframe is absolutely as different from any of the typical Crichton sci-book thrillers as you can get. Does it mean it is bad and his fans will not love it? Ha! No. This book is hard to review, because the plot is very basic. Young woman who is an executive in an airline company is getting investigated about an airline disaster. It is so much more than this. She reminds you of the strong, single dame in the movies you see a lot. Which, on a side note, I cannot see how this was not made into a movie instantly having the most easiest of all his books to be filmed other than Disclosure and Rising Sun. (Ashley Judd gets my vote). Anyway, Airframe isn't a high-octane thrill ride like Timeline or Jurassic Park but it really really shows that Crichton has more up his sleeve than science fiction. This mystery thriller ranks up there as one of his best. For all you Grisham fans, let me put it like this: Airframe to Michael Crichton is like The Testament to John Grisham; they both go outside their general genre's boarders in these books.In fact, like I said, the four years it took me to read this book...well, lets just say since those four years I've become the biggest Michael Crichton fan. I own the majority of his books in hardcover and have read most of them multiple times. So, thanks Airframe. If you are looking to get into Michael Crichton take my testimony. This book pulled me in. The story development, the twists, the suspense, the...everything! This book does pretty much everything right. I enjoyed it, I know you will.
Book Review: great plot, with good characters, and a moral
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent book. A aircraft manufacturing company is under severe media pressure because of a mid-air accident involving its star product, a wide-body passenger aircraft, the N-22. The accident kills and injures many passengers, and does not get explained until the end of the story. The story's heroine Casey Singleton, Vice President for Quality Assurance, is under pressure to get to the bottom of the accident, because what looks like caused it is a problem with the wing slats that has happened several times in the past. At the same time, the company is negotiating a large N-22 order from China, and the American media is threatening to trash the plane as a deathtrap, putting the China order, and the survivability of the company, in jeopardy. There is also a management faction within the company who are quite prepared to help the media to wreck the company for personal gain, and a union faction prepared to use violence to see that they don't. It's a great plot, with good characters, and you have to read the book to see how all this works out.
Two excellent features stand out. One is the author's research into the aircraft industry. It is excellent and very interesting. I particularly liked how he describes the importance of the wing manufacturing process, with statements like: 'but the wings are a work of art'. The other excellent feature is his illustration of the power of the media to destroy what is good, for no other reasons than achieving a 'good story', or acting out some unfounded anti-business prejudice. They have this power, the author appears to argue, because they have too many rights, and too little accountability. For me, this is reminiscent of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", where honest industrialists are devastated by corrupt politicians and the media. In "Airframe", the author is probably exaggerating the negative media forces a little (at least I hope so) for the sake of the plot, but he sure does a convincing job.
This is one of the author's best books.
Book Review: "A little bit of media-bashing..."
Summary: 5 Stars
Flight TPA 545 is travelling from Hong Kong to Denver with an entirely Chinese crew aboard. Somewhere along the way, something goes wrong, and the pilot asks for clearance for an emergency landing at Los Angeles. Over the radio he reports, "We have a passenger emergency. We need ambulances on the ground. I would say thirty or forty ambulances, maybe more."But nothing prepares rescue workers for the carnage they witness when they enter the plane. Ninety-four passengers are injured. Three dead. The interior cabin virtually destroyed. What happened on board?
The pilot says it was turbulence, but other than that the entire crew remains mysteriously tight-lipped. Enter Casey Singleton of the Incident Review Team of Norton Aircraft, the company that built the plane. It's up to her and the rest of the team to find out what happened, and they have to do it fast. Norton Aircraft has an as-yet unsigned huge deal with China on the cards, and everything depends on clearing up this incident, so the pressure's high.
To make matters worse, along comes a bunch of journalists who care more about visuals and "how it looks and sounds to the public" rather than actual facts.
This is one great thriller from Michael Crichton, and it's one of my personal favorites. The story is paced well, and as usual Crichton "got the science right". There's a lot of details on the sturcture of an aircraft and some of it's crucial parts. But all that technical gibberish won't make you feel out of place, because it's written so that even a layman would understand. After all, they don't call Crichton "a master storyteller" for nothing.
Another notable point of the novel is how Crichton points out the mishandling of information by the American media. This one really makes the media look evil. But I guess it's somewhat true.
All in all, this is one of Crichton's best. You can't afford to miss it for anything. Go read it!
Book Review: Very disappointing!
Summary: 1 Stars
Never in my life have I read a poorly-written book. Sure, in my time I've seen a truckload of god awful movies that just made me wanna puke. But I never expected this sort of work to be fit into a BOOK. Well, it looks like I proved my self wrong after reading Michael Criton's "Airframe," a supposedly good novel that turned out to just plain stink. This book was a total waste of my time. I could have been listening in class and taking notes, but noooo . . . I was too busy reading this book and expecting it to get good... how strange that I still had my hopes up after page 300.
First off, this book barely has any plot. All it is is some stupid story about a bunch of people investigating a plane crash. It has no thrills or no suspense whatsoever; the only thing that really kept me reading was the chase scenes, which were obviously thrown in to spice the story up a little.
Second, NOTHING INTERESTING HAPPENS. I was expecting something we'd find in the average Michael Critchen novel, like Marty Reardon getting wasted on the plane on his way to the interview. Nope, none of that! Its 350 pages of the most boring content I've ever read . . .
In conclusion, I just want to get the point across about how much I hated this book. I don't see how the book could get all those rave reviews on the back, saying it was Michael's "best since Jurassic Park." Wrong! Jurassic Park actually had what I'd call a 'thrill', plus a bunch of big dinosaurs. So you're telling me a PLANE CRASH is better than people getting eaten by a T-Rex? I think those critics actually need to READ the book instead of just looking at the description on the back, because this book certainly does not deserve all of this credit. I'm really hoping that Micheal's upcoming works aren't going to bore me as badly as "AIRFRAME" did.