I listened to this as an audiobook on my absurdly long commute. I rate commute audiobooks differently than non-audiobooks. Requirements for a commute audiobook: 1. It has to be simple enough that I can follow along while also paying attention to driving. 2. It has to be interesting enough to keep me alert.

Sufficiently engaging, sufficiently simple to follow along. I was interested mostly in the science and political/legal/ethical issues surrounding genetic research and genetic engineering.

It's not a great book by any means. There isn't really a central plot, just a lot of subplots, some of which converge near the end. Most plots are developed a scene at a time, interspersed with the other plots, but there's one that doesn't start until halfway through and gets several scenes over a relatively long period of time all at once, which was out of place given the book's structure.

Based on this book, you'd think that the world was populated almost entirely by men. Almost all the characters are men; certainly all the characters with power are men; the few women are bombshells, wives/mothers, or ineffectual at their jobs. The one female lawyer loses her case then has to go on the run from a big bad bounty hunter hired by a corporate big shot--she is effectively powerless. For a book with as many plot lines and characters as this one, there really should be more women. And more people of color. This is supposed to be realistic, but the world of Next is almost entirely white and male. Gross.

Towards the end Michael Crichton creates a character who has the purview to talk at length about the legal/ethical implications of genetic research and tissue donation/tissue ownership. It is obvious that this character (male of course) is a stand in for Crichton; it is confirmed in the afterward, which gives Crichton's views on the issues raised in the book, and which strongly echoes the stand-in's monologue. It might have made for a more interesting--certainly more subtle-- discussion in the context of the book if "Crichton's Opinion" had been divided among multiple characters and introduced slowly over the course of the book in multiple plot lines.

However, it was fast paced, action-packed, and interesting enough to keep me awake while driving. 3-star commute audiobook. I will probably return to more of his books for my commute listening pleasure.