I was pleased to find that the library has several Crichton books available as eBooks. Congo had the highest rating of them, so it was the one I chose first.
For the first half to two-thirds of the novel I was certainly as engaged with it as with both Jurassic titles. However in the last third it becomes clear that this is one of Crichton's early works. The focus of the novel, the balance of good and evil, the objective of characters shifts suddenly and without seeming reason. What was an ecological fiction becomes a story of war and ancient civilization, a lesson in geology and for a few pages of speech, like Gaul taking over the radio broadcast, the world is lectured to about nuclear warfare. But I suppose it was the cold war, and such a shift in theme may have been expected and contemporary.
I think reading Crichton chronologically would be interesting, especially since it's not his prose but his content that is flawed in this earlier work. But then again, if it means reading 10 novels that annoy you for 100 pages instead of focusing on the last 7... I can't quite decide. Harry Potter in German it is.
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