Crichton may not have the strongest ability for prose, however his central themes and ideas have been fantastic in past books I’ve read and Sphere was no exception. He is extremely gifted at relaying to the audience the core message of his story in an understandable way. Although the writing can be somewhat repetitive, it is incredibly conversational and really pulled me into the story.

The pacing was overall great; the novel starts strong and ends strong, though there are some weak spots in the middle.

The largest weakness is the characters - they are fairly fleshed out, but they come across as dated in attitude (which is fair, given the 1987 publication date) and every once in awhile it seems like one of them does something incredibly stupid just to make the plot advance.

Overall I’d give it a strong 3.5, leaning towards 4.