Congo
by
Michael Crichton

Read by

Judith Ivy

Random House AudioBooks, 1993, 3 hours,

2 cassettes, ISBN: 0-679-43113-6

Genre: Fiction
Reviewed: 12/3/2001

Reviewed by: Conan Tigard

Book Cover

Excerpt

Outside the forbidden city of Zinj in the Congo...

The night of June 21st was so quiet that by 10 o'clock, they switched off the infrared night lights to save power. Almost at once they became away of movement in the foliage outside the compound.

Monroe and Kahiga swung their guns around. The rustling increased and they heard an odd sighing sound, a sort of wheeze.

Elliott heard it too, and felt a chill. It was the same wheezing recorded on the tapes from the first Congo expedition. 

They were all tense, alert, waiting. 

Then shortly before midnight, the electrified perimeter fence erupted in sparks.

Monroe swung his gun around and fired. Ross hit the switch for the nightlights and the camp was bathed in deep red.

"Did you see it?" Monroe said. "Did you see what it was?"

They shook their heads. Nobody had seen anything.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully.

Synopsis

In June of 1979, ERTS (Earth Resources Technology Services Inc out of Houston, Texas) sends an expedition deep into the Congo looking for the lost city of Zinj. After finding the city, the expedition team is slaughtered one morning by what looks like gray gorillas, this much the people back in Houston witnessed on the satellite link before the camera is smashed. But since this is the only supposed locale of the precious blue diamonds, a second expedition team is quickly put together and lead by Karen Ross, the ERTS Congo Project Supervisor.

They are accompanied by Dr. Peter Elliott, a Primatologist who studies primate communications, and a female gorilla named Amy, who Peter has taught sign language. Lately, Amy has been wracked with nightmares that deal with images of Zinj. Dr. Elliott feels that this may be the evidence of Genetic Memory, not realizing that Amy was in the Congo before she was abducted.

When Karen Ross approached Dr. Elliott with the news that an expedition to Zinj is underway, he jumps at the chance for he and Amy to go along. Dr. Elliott is also excited at the prospect of the discovery of a new species of gorilla, a possible violent species with gray hair instead of the normal black.

The Japanese/German Consortium is also looking for the forbidden city of Zinj. The first one there will have the claim to all of the industrial grade diamonds, and therefore corner the technology market. When the ERTS team is forced to jump out of the plane, they realize that they are now 70 hours behind The Consortium. What they don't know is that this is the least of their worries...

This is an audio version of the book Congo by Michael Crichton. The story is read by actress Judith Ivey. This audio book is in cassette format, consisting of 2 cassettes, each about 1½ hours, and plays for 3 hours. This is an abridged version of the novel.  Congo is a fiction story about two expeditions in to the Congo looking for blue industrial-grade diamonds. After the first expedition is massacred, a second follows a few weeks later. But trouble stalks the new group as the gray gorilla-like creatures that guard Zinj will stop at nothing to protects its secrets.

Review

Unfortunately, I saw this movie before I listened to this audio book. The movie was not good and very disappointing. But the book surprised me and I quite enjoyed it. Judith Ivey reads wonderfully and has a different accent for each character. I quite enjoyed her rendition of the characters and often times forgot that a woman was performing the voice of a man...she was that convincing.

The story is exciting and made me quite tense, especially the scenes where the gray gorillas were getting ready to attack. Often times my heartbeat increased as the situations became quite dire for the ERTS team. After all, how do you stop something that is so incredibly strong that has been trained to squash heads between two stone paddles.

Overall, I found that I really liked this reading of Congo and look forward to either listening to another Michael Crichton audio book, or finding one that Judith Ivey reads. Listening to this book while on a long drive just made those three hours fly by.