Book Review -- The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly

The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Matt Reilly is my favorite action/adventure author. Nobody does it bigger, better and badass than Matt. People tend to crib about the lack of factuality or the over the top action sequences, but hey… if you can digest Hollywood then there is no reason not to digest this with a pinch or a bag of salt…which ever you would prefer.

The sheer scale and the grand stage of each and every action/adventure book of Matt Reilly is what sets him apart from his peers. I read The Seven Ancient Wonders first and since then I am hooked and I am an unabashed fan boy…

Coming to the latest novel, The Great Zoo of China, when I first saw the title I was a bit intrigued and I was thinking what can you write about a Zoo Matthew? My curiosity was piqued and I got my hands on the book first from a friend while I was travelling from USA to India and the then got a copy from Net Galley in exchange for an honest unbiased review courtesy of the publisher Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books and the author himself. Boy oh boy what a ride it has been….

China - when we think China we think an industrial powerhouse of production, flooding the world markets with goods made cheaply and efficiently that anywhere in the world. The place where the world comes to get their things built according to their blueprints. But that said let it not be said that the Chinese are not ambitious enough. They are…. They most definitely are on the quest to become a world superpower not only militarily but also economically and most importantly socially. That means bringing tourists to China, so what can they do that will get them enough tourists and put them on par or even above America with its Disneyland?

The idea is building a Zoo, the most biggest, most baddest and the most unique zoo ever seen by the world. A one of a kind zoo… A zoo with… DRAGONS… yes you read me right.. Dragons…

Jurassic Park comes to mind immediately…. Well the Chinese have seen it too and learnt their lessons from it. It is a project that has been in the making since the last 40 years when the Chinese quite literally stumbled into a nest of dragon eggs. Since then it has been a ultra mega $240 billion project to build and showcase the might of China with the greatest zoo ever built by man - A Dragon Zoo with the different species like Red Bellied, Yellow Jacket, Purple Royals, Brown Swamps and so on…

The Chinese claim that they have tamed these beasts, and in fact even trained them… nothing can go wrong in the zoo, of course it is perfectly safe, they even make the dragons put in an performance for the VIP guests from the West including writers from NY Times, the US Ambassador to China and Dr. CJ Cameron and her brother Hamish from Nat Geo. It is a wonderful world, an exquisite but controller world, where the dragons know who their masters are.. So what can go wrong???

Except that everything does, in typical Reilly style it goes to hell hand over fist. With the Great Zoo Matt Reilly delivers his first action heroine Dr. CJ Cameron. She has faced alligators in the everglades, and is the worlds leading expert on reptiles, but soon she finds that Dragons are a different ball game. They are intelligent, they are planners and they are after a bigger goal… Freedom… or is it???

Read the book the find out more, but with the Great Zoo Matt Reilly has taken his game up a notch further. Pitting man against beast, The Great Zoo of China is a high octane adventure that will grab you by the scruff of your neck and will not let you go until the book is finished. You will feel like you have completed a roller coaster ride of your life, but expect a sleepless night if you pick this book up as a night read as you will not be able to put it down… Beware….