Book Review: The Lost Word

                          


         Jim Pagiamtzis review:
        " Its page turning experience that goes deep in the character and action keeps you intrigued all the way to the end!"


      Book review
 
Six years after the disaster at Jurassic Park, chaos theorist and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who survived the events of the previous novel, teams up with paleontologist Richard Levine to search for a "lost world" of dinosaurs following rumors of strange animal corpses washing up on the shores of Costa Rica. They eventually learn of Site B on Isla Sorna, the "production facility" where the now-defunct company InGen hatched and grew the dinosaurs for their Jurassic Park theme park on nearby Isla Nublar.
Afraid that the Costa Rican government will find Isla Sorna and destroy the dinosaurs, Levine hastily embarks on an expedition to the island without Malcolm, who eventually learns that Levine has gone missing there. Malcolm goes to the island with a rescue team consisting of Jack "Doc" Thorne, an engineer and retired university professor; Eddie Carr, Thorne's assistant; and two stowaway children, R.B. "Arby" Benton and Kelly Curtis, who were working as Levine's research assistants as part of a school project.
The group arrives on the island with weapons and a conjoined pair of RV trailers that serve as a mobile laboratory. They find a geothermal-powered complex of abandoned InGen buildings, including a worker village, and a laboratory that the group explores. They eventually find Levine, who is overjoyed at the trove of information he can glean from this "lost world." Simultaneously, another group—geneticists Lewis Dodgson, Howard King and "celebrity" biologist, George Baselton—learns of Levine's expedition and go to Isla Sorna with plans to steal dinosaur eggs for Biosyn, the rival company of InGen. Dr. Sarah Harding, an animal behaviorist and former lover of Malcolm, is travelling with them. The antagonists attempt to kill her, shoving her off the boat, but she survives.
Levine and Malcolm make many observations of the dinosaurs' behavior from the "high hide", an enclosed blind that is set above the ground on scaffolding. They soon learn that Dodgson's group has arrived on the island. Dodgson's group is attacked by a pair of Tyrannosaurus as they try to steal eggs from the animals' nest, resulting in Baselton's death. Dodgson and King become separated after the attack.
While inspecting the T. rex nest, Malcolm finds that one of the infants had been injured and has a broken leg. He instructs Eddie to kill it because it has no chance of surviving in the wild. Unbeknownst to the group, Eddie refuses to kill the injured animal and brings it back to the trailers. When the group discovers the animal, Malcolm and Harding begrudgingly agree to set and cast its leg while the rest of the group returns to the high hide. As night approaches, the nocturnal Velociraptors emerge from the jungle and kill King. As Malcolm and Harding finish setting the rex's leg, the parent rexes come looking for their infant and attack the trailers, pushing one of them over a cliff and injuring Malcolm. Thorne rescues Malcolm and Harding, while the raptors attack the high hide and kill Eddie. The group later takes refuge from the raptors in the general store of the InGen worker village. The group attempts to formulate a plan to reach the landing site where the helicopter is set to meet them in the morning. When Thorne ventures out into the village to search for fuel, he survives an encounter with a pair of chameleon-like Carnotaurus.
The next morning, Dodgson is confronted by Harding, who exacts her revenge by pushing him out from under a car where both are hiding from a T. rex. Dodgson is captured and fed to its infants, while Harding sets out to reach the helicopter before it can take off without the group, but she is too late. The group then discovers a boat docked on the island. As the group sails away, Malcolm reveals information that he discovered in the laboratory: during Site B's active years, InGen fed the young carnivorous dinosaurs sheep extract infected with prions, which causes a disease that shortens the dinosaurs' life spans. Although the scientists contained the disease, it began to spread once again after they abandoned the island. Malcolm suspects that the disease will lead to the eventual extinction of the dinosaurs on Isla Sorna.