"Next" novel Review

I just completed Michael Crichton's novel, NEXT, which deals
with the business behind genetic engineering.Next has plenty
of inputs on the moral and financial implications of human
genetic engineering, but none of them add up to a meaningfull
and involving story. The chapters are short , some moments
even thrilling, but it’s hard to predict where the story is going.


The main plot of the story revolves around the patenting of
genes, and how that is at contraty with regular patent law.
How can you patent something that already exists in nature?
This practice leads to companies controlling entire lines of
research as they will sue if anyone attempts to touch their
genetic "property rights".

The narrative is difficult considering that Next almost never
stops bringing new characters, till the end of the novel
barring last few chapters.At some point of the plot there
were two kids with the same name and it confused me
pretty much whom he is referring to.There is no main
character which makes the plot less interesting. The very
short chapters have you moving from story to story
without making much advancements on each, and some
story lines aren't re-visited for quite a while, leading to
more than a few 'who is this character again?' moments
makes it very irritating . If you're going to read it, it's
best to do so in as much less sittings as possible.

The climax of the story, if you can call it that, is when a
few of the characters come together as the "chase" plot
is over. But after it was all over, I was left with a feeling
of "What the F***, that's it?".

The positive aspect with this novel is that its a well
researched one and very informative as with all
Michael Crichton novels. The internal mechanisms
of the pharmaceutical,biotech,legal, marketing and
genetic labs are explored in great detail.

Overall, i would rate this novel as one of Crichton's worst
works.