Since I loved Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain (way back in high school) I happily picked up Congo at the airport. What an enormous disappointment - the book has the feel of having been written in an hour and a half. Nonsensical details are never explained (what's with the gray gorillas and the paddles? The gorillas were trained by the Zing-ites, back in the day, to execute people with the paddles and they sort of got into it? This is never made clear), the dramatic arc is entirely hosed up, and the characters are ridiculously one-dimensional. This is one of these books where you get to the last 30 pages and you realize that you're SOL - the plot is not going to come together, and you're not going to be satisfied. That, plus the obsessive detail about boring 1980 technology, left me entirely cold - this book hit the airport trash can the minute I debarked.