This "Special Edition Junior Novelization" (as the cover claims) of the film
Jurassic World is something to behold. I've never seen a glossy hardcover junior novelization before!
WARNING!!! This contains
spoilers for both he junior novelization and the film!
Jurassic World is basically Jurassic Park with a facelift, a wildlife park on an idyllic island off the coast of Costa Rica where visitors can come and view live dinosaurs. Gray and Zach Mitchell's parents are going through a divorce, and because their aunt Claire Dearing is the operations manager of the park they're shipped off there by mom and dad because it beats having them around for the divorce proceedings. Unfortunately, their workaholic aunt can't be bothered to watch them and so she hands them off to her even less attentive assistant Zara Young, whom the boys quickly ditch to go exploring the island on their own because apparently the little snots think their VIP bracelets entitle them to do whatever the hell they want.
Meanwhile, trouble is afoot in Jurassic World. Head animal trainer Owen Grady's efforts to tame a pack of
Velociraptors (who are all given individual names) are being undermined by InGen's Vic Hoskins' who is visiting to do an intelligence assessment test on the raptors and has ideas about using trained dinosaurs for military purposes. Owen, a real salt of the earth, animals' rights kinda guy, is against the idea because he considers it amoral. And also really stupid.
And speaking of stupid ideas, because attendance has dropped off in recent years, owner Simon Masrani wants to unveil a new, cool, scary dinosaur, and so he has chief scientist Henry Wu cook up the scary-sounding "
Indominus rex," a genetic hybrid of a
Tyrannosaurus and a whole lot of other predatory dinosaurs. But it turns out that when you create a genetically engineered nightmare dinosaur, they turn out pretty vicious and difficult to control. The thing has to be kept away from the rest of the attractions in the ominously-named Paddock Eleven, a fortress-like enclosure overseen by a high-tech control room.
Even Masrani is beginning to have his doubts about the feasibility of allowing park visitors anywhere
near Paddock Eleven, and so he asks Claire to have Owen Grady come and assess the enclosure's integrity to ensure it's escape-proof:
Indominus rex has made multiple escape attempts and Masrani, with visions of wrongful death suits dancing in his head, doesn't want her getting loose.
When Owen arrives to look over the paddock, however, it seems strangely empty.
Indominus is a no-show. Fearing that she's (somehow) escaped, Claire contacts central control to activate the mutant's tracking implant. Why this wasn't always kept activated is beyond me. Owen and a couple of doomed working schmoes, including the supervisor, enter the enclosure to try and figure out how
Indominus could've gotten loose, when a panicked call comes in over the supervisor's walkie-talkie: they've activated the tracking device...
...and the dinosaur is still in the paddock. They're in there with it!
One dino attack later, which only Owen survives, of course, and
Indominus has broken loose to run amok through the park. The park, Claire realizes with dawning horror, that her two nephews are running around unsupervised in...
It's about par for the course for books of this type, with the carnage toned down a lot, but here's a few spoilerific selections of a couple of the movie's juicier death scenes, including one where the book actually shows (as much as a book can "show") more than the movie did!
Yeah, that guy. In the movie he's grabbed and lifted up out of view, and we just hear him being eaten over the radio. Here, though, he's described getting
swallowed whole. Woo!
Okay, I admit, that was a little graphic for what's supposed to be a kid's book...
Lewman's writing style is serviceable, and in action scenes he's a bit too reliant on
SOUND EFFECTS IN ALL CAPS AND ITALICS WITH EXCLAMATION POINTS!, but, then, well, as mentioned, this is for kids, and so that sort of writing is very attention-grabbing for them.
