I was about to ask if it was better than the film version, but decided it was a stupid question. It's more appropriate to ask how much better it is: slightly, significantly, or several orders of magnitude?
More generally, Crichton and James Herbert were both good writers (IMO) and in their specific strengths were the equal of or better than SK. Crichton's problem, I found, was that his dialogue was a bit stilted and he lacked something in creating a sense of place - as
Lord Tyrion pointed out in his reply to my previous post, SK has the knack of making you feel as if you were there, observing real people in a real location at a given moment in time: a rare gift - while JH could turn a phrase and evoke a strong sense of place (as well as danger/suspense), but struggled with convincing dialogue and a lot of his books relied on formula - you just knew there'd be a sex scene around the mid-point, as one example, and my memory is suggesting that he did betrayal by women/lovers a lot.
So in the round neither were as good as SK is. Which isn't to say SK's writing is flawless. He has, in the past, pointed out weaknesses for himself, and it's something of a truth universally acknowledged that he tends to struggle with endings - although, with that said, it could be argued that the weaker parts only look that way because the rest of his game is so strong.