Formulaic like pretty much all other Crichton books, but without the redeeming quality of page-turning excitement present in his later works. This story of a satellite falling back to Earth after picking up an alien, and dangerous, organism has aged very badly. I can forgive the aged subject matter. Unfortunately, and as opposed to other Crichton books, I didn’t care at all about the characters. There were times when I couldn’t even tell them apart. Still, having read his later works it was interesting to see how it all started. Hints of the author’s future style are discernible in the text. And since it is a very short read it wasn’t too taxing.
