Airframe

I don't listen to too many audiobooks, and this one was pretty decent. The reader had a good speaking voice and wasn't monotone. At three discs, the story feels a bit short, but the Crichton mystery and suspense was there.

Nothing happens in this book! Boring.

This book nosed up, dived down and nosed up again. A no nonsense, info-dense sci-fi. I couldn't care much about the characters, but it definitely had my heart racing.
Apart from the thriller elements, the criticism of modern media, was to the point. I found myself smile-nodding at every sentence.

Talking to a reporter these days was like a deadly chess match; you had to think several steps ahead; you had to imagine all the possible ways a reporter might distort your statement. The atmosphere was relentlessly adversarial.

But now reporters came to the story with the lead fixed in their minds; they saw their job as proving what they already knew. They didn't want information so much as evidence of villainy. In this mode, they were openly skeptical of your point of view, since they assumed you were just being evasive. They proceeded from a presumption of universal guilt, in an atmosphere of muted hostility and suspicion.

There are a lot of naysayers here, but I really liked this book. It's a thriller novel with suitably short chapters about the problems of an aircraft company, Norton, as it tries to deal with the media, business partners, engineering problems, the mysterious provenance of an accident, and many others. It doesn't sound immediately enticing, but I enjoyed this book more than Sphere - it felt somehow more tangible and the characters more convincing.

This was not actually my first read, but the last time was sufficiently long ago that I couldn't remember any plot details. The story is largely presented from the viewpoints of two characters - Casey Singleton, a press officer for Norton tasked along with others with finding out what happened on a flight incident which left many passengers injured and a few killed, and Jennifer Malone, reporter for Newsline, looking to tear apart Norton for a 15 minute story. Events unfold and Crichton is able to push his message that the media is getting too powerful, while maintaining tension and keeping me awake (I read this in one sitting!)

Very easy read and fun story.

• Action moves along nicely,
  - Lots of science but doesn't sidetrack too much to explain and doesn't use alot of jargon without simple explanations
  - Lots of outstanding unanswered questions that have to be pieced together so you don't guess the answer too quickly.
  - Death but not too grisly except for 1 scene early on.
  
  All things I like in a book and get from Mr Crichton's every time.

What a fantastic thriller! Was hooked from start to end. Looking forward to continue reading Michael Crichton books.

this holds up way better than i expected. good thriller/noir/airplane manual.

It is a technical look at the inner workings of an airline and the problems that arise.

Crichton has a lot of exposition and sometimes it's a little clunky why there's characters explaining to one another something that is common knowledge with the group experiencing whatever the story is about. You should expect this in the book.

I thought that this had a similar pattern to Disclosure in some ways. Something wonky happened with a high-tech product and the protagonist has to find the right people to get information that makes the pieces fit together despite management setting you up to fail. The specifics of the friction and trouble are different of course, in one it is sexual harassment shenanigans and in this one it is union trouble and EVPs fighting for more money.

I thought it was alright, the murder attempt being kind of brushed off as union hijinks was a little off putting. I'd read disclosure over this one though.

¡Que maravilla! Crichton nos deleita con un thriller administrativo y burocrático sobre una empresa aeronáutica. Nos enseña sobre procesos, técnicismos y demás temas sobre aeronaves. A mitad de libro ya esperaba que la solución al misterio fuera alguna explicación sobrenatural o que recuriera a ciencia ficción, pero no lo hace; toda la historia se resuelve dentro de lo que se podría considerar realista.

Una lectura muy recomendable.