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A review by cornmaven
The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly
1.0
I really wanted to like this book, but in the end I could not give it more than one star. My analysis:
This is really a screenplay, not a novel. It is basically Jurassic World only with dragons. That's not a bad thing; that's the reason I picked it up. But the execution of the story did not fit the medium.
The positives:
Exciting plot.
Cool dragons.
The negatives:
Cardboard, stereotypical action movie characters, more suited for a big screen summer blockbuster than a book.
The writing style was lazy and some of it was condescending to a reader. Why feel the need to define something as iconic as FUBAR? Why have to lecture for 2-3 pages on the different types of hibernation, when a well crafted conversation could have done the trick? If a reader doesn't know these things, they can look them up.
Insertion of special effects/action words into the narrative (again like a screenplay). I got tired of reading "Whoosh", "Wham!" "Splat" and "Boom".
Oh yeah, and as others have pointed out, a plethora of hyphens, exclamation points, and dot dot dots.....................
Very repetitive descriptions of things, as if the remuneration was a per word contract. CJ pulling out the brain chip through Lucky's eye socket, for example. To paraphrase, she pulled it out of the socket. The chip came out. Duh.
There was always some amazing circumstance that kept the characters alive, described as "miraculously." It got tedious.
By the end, I decided that I would have rather watched this as a movie, than read it as a book. Of course, I don't think U.S./China relations would benefit from having it filmed, as the Chinese are such ruthless bad guys in the story.
This is really a screenplay, not a novel. It is basically Jurassic World only with dragons. That's not a bad thing; that's the reason I picked it up. But the execution of the story did not fit the medium.
The positives:
Exciting plot.
Cool dragons.
The negatives:
Cardboard, stereotypical action movie characters, more suited for a big screen summer blockbuster than a book.
The writing style was lazy and some of it was condescending to a reader. Why feel the need to define something as iconic as FUBAR? Why have to lecture for 2-3 pages on the different types of hibernation, when a well crafted conversation could have done the trick? If a reader doesn't know these things, they can look them up.
Insertion of special effects/action words into the narrative (again like a screenplay). I got tired of reading "Whoosh", "Wham!" "Splat" and "Boom".
Oh yeah, and as others have pointed out, a plethora of hyphens, exclamation points, and dot dot dots.....................
Very repetitive descriptions of things, as if the remuneration was a per word contract. CJ pulling out the brain chip through Lucky's eye socket, for example. To paraphrase, she pulled it out of the socket. The chip came out. Duh.
There was always some amazing circumstance that kept the characters alive, described as "miraculously." It got tedious.
By the end, I decided that I would have rather watched this as a movie, than read it as a book. Of course, I don't think U.S./China relations would benefit from having it filmed, as the Chinese are such ruthless bad guys in the story.