The characters are stereotyped beyond belief: the hard working but put upon single mother, the brusque and impatient boss, the techy nerds, the debonair test pilot, the slimy industrial spy, the good-hearted mentor, the young, overly ambitious news producer, and on and on.

The plot involves an incident on a Norton Aircraft passenger liner that is complicated by a pending sale of the same model to China, a union action to stall manufacturing offsets going to China as a condition of the sale, internal company politics, and a pending "Newsline" story about unsafe Norton aircraft. There may have been others. Chrichton had to do something to fill 400+ pages.

I had pretty much figured out how it was going to end about 150 pages in. Except for some details, I made a pretty accurate guess. There were a few surprises but overall it was a predictable story with a predictable ending. I wonder if the aircraft industry subsidized Chrichton's efforts.

On the positive side, I did learn some things about the aircraft industry, how accidents are investigated, and more than I wanted to know about the acronyms used in the industry.

If you are a died in the wool Crichton fan or are stuck on a long flight with nothing else to read, I can recommend this book to you. Other than that there are just too many good Michael Crichton books as well as books about the aircraft industry. You would be better served reading those.



le_mous (USA: CO) (2010/06/07):
Hey, it's a Michael Crichton book. What are we expecting here?