Review – The Great Zoo of China

Posted November 11, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Great Zoo of China by Matthew ReillyThe Great Zoo of China, Matthew Reilly

Jurassic Park, but Chinese, there are journalists mostly rather than scientists, and the creatures are dragons. And it’s really not a cutting edge idea: even without Jurassic Park, there’s stuff like Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons and plenty of other things which have dragons being real and in a real-world setting. The writing wasn’t good enough to sell this idea to me again: I’d rather get round to finishing Jurassic Park, or reread Brennan’s books.

It’s not bad as a light thriller, but it feels definitely gimmicky, like a cash-in. Particularly since I started hearing buzz about it when Jurassic World came out.

One thing in its favour, though: a strong central female character. It’s not so great that apart from her scars she’s conventionally attractive — like the author thought oh, she still has to be pretty — but it is great that she has them, and that they’re a legacy of her actual work with actually relevant creatures.

Rating: 2/5

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