Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly

I was really trying not to do this. I did not want to review this book.

The Great Zoo of China is just... bad. Really, really bad.

Like the worst rip-off of Jurassic Park you've ever read, but with a  half-arsed attempt at dragons instead of dinosaurs. And not in a fun I-know-this-is-crap-but-I'm-going-to-have-fun-with-it-anyway. More like Matthew Reilly pitched this idea to his publisher when he was drunk, and then had to write it sober to a deadline that kept getting pushed forward, and the stress killed whatever love he had for the material, and he would have stopped but his kitchen really needed a renovation... You get the idea.

To be honest, I don't care that the human characters are flat and one-dimensional. In a story like this, they're just walking meat puppets. They're only around long enough to die gruesomely. But the one thing that should have been developed coherently are the dragons.

Unfortunately the story can't decide what metaphor it's exploring. Jurassic Park's dinosaurs, depending on whether you go by the book or movie, were either an exploration of the dangers of technology or the consequences of not applying technology wisely. The Great Zoo of China is initially similar, then sort of devolves into a weird "don't use dangerous dragons as cuddly theme park attractions, except for the good dragons, they're okay" space-whale aesop.

The sad part is Reilly completely missed the interesting point, which was "holy crap, they're knowingly enslaving intelligent life!" No wonder the dragons were so uptight. If I were a carnivorous ancient reptile forced to perform circus trips for barely evolved creatures I'd have eaten back in the good old days, you bet I'd be up for some carnage.

By neatly sidestepping all the tricky, interesting questions like 'how do you deal with sentient life with a legit grudge, blue-and-orange morality, and really big teeth' the book loses a lot of its oomph. It felt like someone was trying to mash a creature feature and a junior high school fantasy novel together. The two tones just don't mesh. If Reilly were going to take inspiration for dragons, he should have used something more sophisticated than Eragon.

*Re-reading last paragraph.* Wow, that was really mean. I never thought I'd compare anything to Eragon.

Okay, I take it back. He should have used something other than Dragonriders of Pern. Maybe The Hobbit or Liveship Traders. Both use intelligent dragons that are indifferent or opposed to humankind and have tones that would fit better into the creature-feature that Great Zoo of China desperately wants to be. In the words of Matthew Reilly himself:-

       "A monster movie is only as good as the monster in it."