More action-packed and imaginative than the Lincoln Childs novels, Child has masterfully constructed Utopia, a robotic futuristic theme park in the desert. Combine a fading academician, his troubled teenage daughter, a budding romantic interest and a terrorist psychopath and you have a plot with more twists and turns than the deadly rollercoaster. A bit of unlikey luck helps the heroes also. As for the incredible finale...you should have seen it coming.

Jurassic Park fans look out! There are a great deal of similarities between Utopia and Crichton's Jurassic Park. (No dinosaurs though). Utopia is a new modern amusement park with every innovation and thrill ride imaginable. I wish it existed I would love to visit. Things go wrong for a variety of reasons but to me the great strength of the novel is attention to detail and the knowledgeable descriptions of the behind the scenes working of a huge amusement park. Lincoln Child really did his homework on this one.

I'm a great fan of the Preston/Child books, but I just couldn't get into this one. I started reading it twice, but gave up both times, yawn.

I don't know how 2 people can be better than one when writing but I guess Preston and Child will have to keep splitting their paychecks 50/50.

Utopia by Lincoln Child combines elements from previous futuristic amusement park concepts such as Westworld, Futureworld and Jurassic Park and then mixes in some of the classic suspense elements of a hostage situation and turns out a pretty good novel.

Dr. Andrew Warne is a robotics specialist who created some of the robotics for Utopia, an entertainment world in the desert of Nevada that uses complex holographic and computerized technology to immerse visitors in various worlds such as the medieval area, or the boardwalk. Warne is called into the park because of an accident that occurred on one of the park's most popular rides that nearly resulted in the death of a young boy.

The book is peppered with some stereotypical characters-- Warne's ex-girlfriend is the Parks Operations Manager; Warne's teen-age daughter Georgia accompanies him on this visit-- and there's a lot of stuff we've seen before in other books like visitors running around with eyes wide open with amazement. There are the usual park administrators who spend a lot of time showing Warne the various foolproof systems, designs, cameras, sensors and grids to monitor every single aspect of park operations to make things completely safe. However, the reason you have stereotypes is because these types of features tend to work in creating the proper atmosphere for technology-gone-wrong thrillers.

And technology does go wrong in Utopia, and here is where Child throws his unique twist in, because the park systems have been infiltrated by a group of criminals who threaten to use all this incredible technology to kill everyone in the park unless their demands are met. The suspense comes from trying to out think the criminals without letting any of the park visitors know that anything is wrong.

There are no real surprises in this book-- you know who is going to die and who is going to live and you even figure out pretty quickly who the villain is. Nevertheless, the book is an enjoyable read. Child comes up with some unique uses of technology, both on the part of the criminals who have infiltrated the park and on the part of Warne and Boniface as they furiously plan and scheme to outwit the criminals. He puts his characters together well and succeeds in maintaining the level of suspense throughout the novel. I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading the inevitable sequel.

I am a huge fan of Preston/Child and picked this up for that reason. Alas, one half does not a whole make!
It takes a serious theme park fan to take the time to design a dream park and Mr. Child quite obviously expended a lot of effort in this direction. Unfortunately, he populated his park with stock characters. Surely one of the things he should have realized from the success of Preston/Child is the need for interesting heroes and villains.
I won't go into the details but suffice it to say that Utopia remains an unrealized aspiration.