Airframe
by Michael Crichton
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Book Reviews of Airframe
Book Review: Smooth Sailing
Summary: 4 Stars
Like a good neighbor, Michael Critchen is there. When you want to read a no hassle guaranteed good book, M.C.'S airframe is a book that can certainly share that tile along with many of his other novels. Airframe is as slick moving and as aerodynamic as one of planes described in his novel.The story involves a plane that has an in air accident, people are hurt and questions need to be answered or heads will roll. Critchen takes a technical subject and makes it easy to follow. You will learn alot about the airplane industry, deregulation drawbacks, corrupt business men, union troubles and immoral reporters. Critchen pulls no punches on touchy subjects and makes it really entertaining. The last 100 pages read like a roller coaster ride, loops and all.
In a nutshell, an accident in the air causes many to be hurt. Now the question is cast: Is the plane unsafe? What caused the accident? Will this accident prevent a potentially large contract from being obtained? Who or what will prevent it? Critchen's heroin Casey, must put her reputation on the line as the airplane quality assurance rep, and dig through the mass of technical facts, bureaucracy and overzealous reporters. What will happen next you'll need to read to find out.
Book Review: A must read. If you fly a lot though, don't read this book!
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are not into books with a lot of technical and industry jargon, then this book is not for you. But if you like being on the edge of your seat, and can handle the sheer amount of detailed information being thrown at you on every page, then this book is for you! This book follows the same form that every other book that Crichton has written in that he throws in a lots and lots of technical information. A fact that stands out to me is a lot of the morons who gave it a bad review just couldn't handle this massive amount of data, and should have never tried to read a Crichton novel. They should stick with the little Golden Books they read as children. Disclosure was exactly the same way in that respect. The movie did not do Disclosure justice. And if the idiot who said something about the bad guy element doesn't think that insiders involved in an accident of this nature don't try to cover up vital evidence in real life better think again. This book is for the most part true to life, and could really happen. This is an A-1 piece of reading material for anyone ready for a good book. I read it in two days and I highly recommend it. Try Micheal's best book, A Case of Need. His best work by far!!Book Review: One point off for poor technical research
Summary: 4 Stars
The book was classic Crichton, but I was disappointed with his factual errors that could have been avoided with some really basic research, such as:1. His description of a turbofan engine was very jumbled and just plain wrong. In one passage he refers to the fan and compressor interchangeably as he talks about metal temperatures of 2500F. The air temperature does not get anywhere near this high in that part of the engine because it is prior to fuel combustion. Even in the hot section of the engine, this might be the temperature of the gas, but certainly not of the metal. Thousands of engineers in the aerospace industry could have helped him with his description without giving away any proprietary information.
2. He refers to runways #2 and #3 at the same airport, apparently thinking runways are sequentially numbered. As any private pilot could have told him, runways are numbered by the compass heading, with the last digit deleted, so that a runway aiming to the east is #9, one to the south is #18, and so on. You would never find runways #2 and #3 at the same airport.
As usual for Crichton, the book was a page turner, but these blatant errors interrupted the flow of the story for me.
Book Review: Worst Crichton EVER!
Summary: 1 Stars
Michael Crichton is an author whose work is well admired and respected by not just myself, but readers of all ages all across the country. His ability to create page-turning suspense and devle into interesting topics of science-fiction are well noted in books like "Sphere", "Jurassic Park", and "The Lost World."
"Airframe," however, seemed like a day-off from storytelling and a long excersize in expressing well researched knowledge in the airline business. Crichton seems to miss the narrative pull and focuses largely on showing-off his ability as an expert in research. The characters are far from interesting, the story is hard to find (if there is one) and nothing about it is shocking, interesting, exciting, or inspiring. I felt like Crichton was not even interested in this novel himself and wrote it more because he felt he had to with his extraordinary knowledge in the subject.
Bottom line is if you're looking for a book of facts and numbers and words you can't understand, this is for you. But if you're looking for a fun, exciting, suspensful, and engaging novel, look towards Crichton's other remarkable works. This is just not it.
Book Review: Weak and predictable story from beginning to end
Summary: 1 Stars
This is the first and last time I read a book from Crichton. The story is weak since the beginning. Everything is predictable. An example? a) The American woman sees the pilot leaving the cockpit, b) the crew leaves the airport in a hurry, like fleeing the scene, c) The airplane shows no defect, d)The flight instructor swears that it can't be human error because Chang is the best pilot he's ever seen... it's so hard to figure it out? If you need to go from page 10 (the incident) to page 340 (when Casey finally figures it all out) to get a clue, this book is for you. Otherwise, try something else. The characters are weak and artificial and since Crichton wants to show his famous research skills, every character is unnatural, they don't speak, they lecture. Good people are really good, shy and well-intentioned. Bad people are mean, greedy and false. Chinese are detailist, Korean are hardworking, the test piot had to be a bold Texan, of course, the engineer lives for his plane, journalists are hollow, etc. etc. He only forgot a couple of corrupt politicians to complete the plot! My recommendation? Stay away! This airframe will take you straight to boredom!