BOOK REVIEW: The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly

BOOK REVIEW: The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly

Macmillan
November 2014, $39.99
Reviewed by Steph O’Connell

6/10

It is a secret the Chinese government has been keeping for forty years.
They have found a species of animal no one believed even existed. It will amaze the world.
Now the Chinese are ready to unveil their astonishing discovery within the greatest zoo ever constructed.
A small group of VIPs and journalists has been brought to the zoo deep within China to see its fabulous creatures for the first time.
Among them is Dr Cassandra Jane ‘CJ’ Cameron, a writer for National Geographic and an expert on reptiles.
The visitors are assured by their Chinese hosts that they will be struck with wonder at these beasts, that they are perfectly safe, and that nothing can go wrong.
Of course it can’t…
GET READY FOR ACTION ON A GIGANTIC SCALE.

 

A few people close to me are loyal, loyal fans of Matthew Reilly, but beyond that I had never really paid much attention to him. I knew he sold well, I knew he was popular, and I knew his stories were epic and full of action.

I’ve always liked my action with a little something “other” and, operating under the misconception that Reilly’s action was straight, real world action, I never thought to try. Until I heard about The Great Zoo of China, I didn’t realise that Reilly’s books are exactly the sort of books I would likely enjoy.

Contest: the one with the fight to the death inside the New York Public Library?
Ice Station: the one about the gate to hell itself at the bottom of the ocean, hidden far below the ice?
Seven Deadly Wonders: the first in a series that sounds like a bit of a cross between Indiana Jones and National Treasure?

Seriously, they all sound like awesome fun! And his newest one is about a dragon zoo?! Sign me up!

 

It had its problems:

The overuse of italics and exclamation marks in the narrative telling the reader when to feel shocked, while countless other writers manage to do the same with just their words. And honestly, the situations in this book would be just as shocking without the overabundance of formatting to ensure we’re getting the message. This led to a fair bit of eye rolling after the first couple of instances, and I started marking each time I came across an exclamation mark. I was being pulled out of the story by them anyway, so I may as well make note.

 

A few things happened throughout the story that didn’t make sense (like the acidic fire that was so strong it could burn a dragon, dissolve a person’s skin and bones in seconds, and MELT THE FREAKING GROUND, but was stopped by a flexible, man made form of heat protection… and other things I won’t go into for fear of spoiling it for you). There were also a fair few instances of things seeming to work out just a little too easily for the characters, and things conveniently happening to give them a means of escape from an otherwise hopeless situation. Deus ex machina, if you will.

 

I didn’t feel much of an emotional connection to most of the human characters in the story. At times I worried about their safety, sure, but I was never all that shocked or devastated when one of them died.
I felt more for the dragons, even the ones that were evil.

 

There were issues with the way the dragons were explained.
There are six different types of Dragons: Red-bellied Blacks, Yellow Jackets, Green Rivers, Swamp Browns, Eastern Greys, and Purple Royals.
Within each colour/herd of dragons, there are Princes, Kings, and Emperors; the Princes are about the size of a car, the Kings the size of a bus, and the Emperors the size of a commercial plane.
One would think, given the colour divisions and the different sizes, that a dragon is born the size of a Prince and over time becomes a King and then an Emperor. It’s never made explicit, but at one point the characters find themselves looking at the eggs in the dragon nest.
This suggests all manner of conflict in the plot, not the least of which is the fact that a dragon would have to grow larger, in order to lay an egg. It would be more likely, given this new information, that the Emperors would be a species, but with varied colour markings, the Kings would be another species, and the Princes a third species.

 

But all in all, this was a very fun, easy read, and after the two-hudred page mark I couldn’t put it down. I kept promising myself I would read “one more chapter”. At one point I woke up at 2:30 in the morning, decided to read until I got sleepy, and looked over at my clock to find that it was now 6:30. The short chapters and plethora of diagrams no doubt contributed to the speed of the read, allowing the reader to not need to focus too hard on the descriptions, but still have a clear sense of the layouts of the buildings and what was going on.

I loved some of the characters, though most not human, and the way the author explained the existence of Dragons, how it was grounded in reality and connected to the dinosaurs.

After the action started, and before I hit my limit on exclamation marks, I looked up the descriptions of Reilly’s other books, sure I would enjoy them immensely. By the end of the book I was a little less infatuated. I will still pick his other books up, though probably not immediately.

I’d recommend this to fans of action and adventure, though possibly not to trained editors like myself.

 

Category: Book Reviews, Other Reviews