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The Great Zoo of China by [Matthew Reilly]

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Matthew Reilly

The Great Zoo of China Kindle Edition

by Matthew Reilly (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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The no. 1 bestseller from Australia's favourite novelist, author of the Scarecrow series and the Jack West Jr series with new novel The One Impossible Labyrinth out now.

"A big bold blockbuster" Sydney Morning Herald

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.

The Chinese are ready to unveil their fabulous creatures in the greatest zoo ever constructed. VIPs and journalists, including reptile expert Dr Cassandra Jane 'CJ' Cameron, are invited to see the beasts for the first time.

The visitors are assured by their Chinese hosts that they are perfectly safe, that nothing can go wrong.
Of course it can't...

Fans of Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton will love Matthew Reilly.

PRAISE FOR THE GREAT ZOO OF CHINA

"a heady mixture of everything old and new in the popular thriller" Saturday Age

"urgent pacing and whiplash action" West Australian

"The story rapidly races through a series of increasingly spectacular action set pieces to the final breathless conclusion" Sydney Morning Herald

Print length

463 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Macmillan Australia
Publication date

10 November 2014
File size

10652 KB
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Review

Jurassic Park with dragons instead of dinosaurs... so compellingly written that you get caught up in the furiously dramatic story... THE GREAT ZOO OF CHINA is a blockbuster of a book that tears along at a shrieking pace. (SCI-FI NOW)

I enjoyed The Great Zoo of China from start to finish and found it difficult to put down. It's fun, it's tense, action-packed and rewarding with a subtle humour that offsets all the action and bloodletting. A Hollywood Blockbuster in Book form. (SFBOOK.COM)

The science and the setting of "The Great Zoo of China" make the scenario completely believable. The action is overwhelming, making the reader feel giddy as the pages fly. You will believe that dragons are real. (WASHINGTON POST)

When it comes to thrillers from Matthew Reilly, phrases like 'high octane' and 'intense action' don't even come close to adequately convey how much insanity he manages to cram into every novel. I've come to expect twisty-turny plots that rattle along at a breakneck pace and that I'll be so caught up that I'll be frightened to even blink. The good news is that The Great Zoo of China is no exception to this rule. (THEELOQUENTPAGE)

A very exciting book... I loved every page of The Great Zoo of China. It's undemanding, great fun to read, thrilling, exciting, gory and did I say thrilling? (FORWINTERNIGHTS)

Brace yourself for non-stop action... Fast furious, this is a must read for fans of Matthew Reilly and the action genre. (YORKSHIRE EVENING POST)

'If you liked Jurassic Park prepared to be totally blown away by this action-packed blockbuster.' (PETERBOROUGH EVENING TELEGRAPH) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Matthew Reilly is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous novels in several series, including the childrens book Hover Car Racer, and the Jack West Jr. action adventure series. His books have been published in more than twenty languages and have sold more than seven million copies worldwide.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00LBQWH76
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Macmillan Australia (10 November 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 10652 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 463 pages

Best Sellers Rank: 84,302 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 4,788 in Suspense Thrillers (Kindle Store)
- 5,724 in Contemporary Fiction (Kindle Store)
- 6,012 in Suspense Thrillers (Books)

Customer Reviews:
1,619 ratings

About the author

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Matthew Reilly

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Matthew Reilly is the international bestselling author of eight novels: The 6 Sacred Stones, 7 Deadly Wonders, Ice Station, Temple, Contest, Area 7, Scarecrow, and the children's book Hover Car Racer, and one novella, Hell Island. His books are published in more than eighteen languages in twenty countries, and he has sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide.

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4 star		19%
3 star		10%
2 star		5%
1 star		5%

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Top reviews from Australia

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Chris Radge

I LOVE this book

Reviewed in Australia on 14 October 2019

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Mathew Reilly never ceases to amaze me with his stories. They are always different. Some authors write similar stories over and over again in the same voice. NOT Mathew Reilly, his voice is always different. Do yourself a favour and read everything he's ever written...

2 people found this helpful

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Jean Seifert

Big Scale Action

Reviewed in Australia on 11 December 2014

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Well what can I say - it is all action to the point of making you read on the edge of your seat! Frankly I can just image China creating something so great as to make the world take note with their authoritarian, ruthless and repressive Communist Party. Excellent story and so believable but the action for me was a little far fetched. The main character left Indiana Jones for dead - she was even better then Zena the Warrior however never a minute or should I say second went by without her being tormented to within an inch of her life. The descriptions of the facility and surrounds was breath-taking not to mention the security variations. An enjoyable read.

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Ray O.

Just as exciting as his other works

Reviewed in Australia on 4 January 2019

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It's an independent novel, but it's just as action packed and fast paced as every other book.
The lack of backstory and mythology present in the Jack West series makes it more fast paced, actually.
There's less world-building as it's set in just one location, and doesn't build into other stories.

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Noreen Gibbs

Dragons

Reviewed in Australia on 11 May 2021

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Wow having read all of Matthew’s books this one is spellbinding I had to keep reading until the best ending. The entrance of Lucky one of the dragons in the novel is what fairy tales are made of. Great characters as always and well Lucky steals the scene read it and see what I mean.

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HeatherAnn

Fantastic Adventure

Reviewed in Australia on 24 September 2019

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A classic fast paced Matthew Riley novel. I loved the dragon theme and the humanity of CJ and Lucky. A very clever salute to the Chinese theme was reading the novel backwards i.e. right to left. Well done Matthew you carried off another brilliant action novel to perfection.

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Paul J. Hancock

Escapism at its Best

Reviewed in Australia on 5 January 2015

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This is a fast moving adventure story. It's basically a constant chase with the heroes being pursued by relentless, resourceful enemies bent on eliminating them. Reilly owes a great debt to Michael Crichton whose Jurassic Park" was the clear inspiration for this story. It has very obvious plot similarities, similar characterisation and exhibits the same fears about the dangers of scientific discovery being misused, falling into the wrong hands and leading to chaos. Despite, or perhaps because of, these similarities this book is unputdownable. Yes it's improbable, even ludicrous but you won't think about that until you finish it. Escapism at its best!

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ralphptf

Once again, impossible to put down

Reviewed in Australia on 29 December 2014

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Matthew Reilly has once again delivered a sensational read that, like his dragons, soars and swoops, taking you on the ride of your life. A new genre for Reilly, but then not so much. As always with his books, this one was easy to choose, easy to start and impossible to stop as it carries you at breakneck speed to its final conclusion.
Thanks, Matt, for a wonderful trip to the Great Zoo of China.

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maria

The great zoo of China is one of the best books I have read (I read it three times )

Reviewed in Australia on 2 November 2018

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To me you are one of the best writer of this time, I am 81 years old and I started reading when I was 5 years old. A lot of books have passed in my hands in all this years so I think I can judge a book!

2 people found this helpful

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Mr. C. E. Mayfield

Not quite "Jurassic Park"

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 June 2021

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I bought this book as I found a host of Matthew Reilly (“MR”) books for 99p each on Amazon and, as I thoroughly enjoyed some of his previous books, I decided to give it a go as I had always described his books like “watching a fast paced, low budget, action film”.

I didn’t have a clue what this one was about when I started reading, other than a Chinese zoo (obviously) as I was reading on Kindle (not easy to get to a blurb in my opinion).

Let’s start with a positive, I liked the theme of the book, a Dragon zoo, but I quickly started to draw comparisons with Jurassic Park (a fact which the author acknowledges in the review at the end of the book). MR must have realised this on his proofing/feedback of early versions as at around the time when I started to think that is when everything just goes to pot with the dragons trying to escape.

From there it is an incredibly unbelievable storyline from an action point of view (not a problem for me, that’s what I wanted) and found that the whole dragon aspect did seem well done. Particular standout points (without spoilers) were how the dragons survived, the links to other mythologies, and the idea of their pack mentality.

My criticism comes from his use of exclamation marks, almost as if MR can’t believe what he had written (I think I have said this before in a review of another book of his). If you are like me you will hear the story unfolding with a series of “OMG’s!!!” being shouted at you - I somehow managed to ignore the exclamation marks after around 50% of reading the book and see through to the real content.

I initially wanted to give the book only 3 out of five because of this, but on reflection, the story and the setting were well described (the maps did help). I would not say don’t read the book, just… try and get over the exclamation points as soon as you can! That was an intentional exclamation mark to make a point, not an over use ;-)

One person found this helpful

Kingy

I enjoyed this book in much the same way i would ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 March 2015

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I enjoyed this book in much the same way i would enjoy a low-brow action film. It's very entertaining while it lasts but has very little substance.
The pace is quick and the action relentless. The characters are a mixed bag, with the Heroine the only one to receive any kind of development or back story. The rest are there to make up numbers and be dragon fodder.
The beasts themselves are great fun with a pseudo-intellectual reason given for their existence and several distinct species presented throughout the story.
The story itself quite obviously based on 'Jurassic Park' following it's structure closely and even alluding to it directly at one point. Though the author goes to great lengths in an interview - included here as supplementary material - to stress that this book is markedly different to Crichton's novel the similarities are far too obvious for it to be taken entirely on it's own merits.
Furthermore the author is clearly a fan of very good action films as a number of set pieces are taken directly from 'Die Hard' and 'Aliens'. Unfortunately like the premise of the book itself, these scenes are that bit too close to the original to be seen as anything other than a poor imitation.
Ultimately, I feel that Reilly channeled his love of action films into a book he hoped would be another 'Jurassic Park' or 'Jaws' the result is more akin to Roland Emmerichs 'Godzilla' or 'Deep Blue Sea' but no less fun for it.

12 people found this helpful

Mr. J. Bradshaw

A world of Thrills and Spills

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 January 2018

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I'm a real Matthew Riley fan and have read the full series' (so far) on Jack West Jr and Shane Schofield (aka Scarecrow), so when I saw this book I expected it to live up to Riley's thunderous, fast paced, page turning standard. I was not disappointed! This is a 'stand alone' novel, refreshingly featuring a female lead. I've read some reviews which have categorized this book as 'Jurassic Park with dragons', but it is so much more than that. It's written in a way which makes the subject matter, a lot of which is scientifically technical, quite believable and leaves the reader with having 'learned something' as well as being entertained on a thrill-a-minute roller-coaster ride. I thoroughly enjoyed escaping into this book and must say it compares very well with Riley's other stand-alone novels like Temple and The Contest (which I'm currently re-reading). If this is your first step into Matthew Riley's world of thrills and spills; this is a good place to start. Riley's writing style is not for everyone, but if you like wild action scenes, plot twists and cliff-hanger suspense, you won't be disappointed.

Owen

A great zoo of rubbish

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 December 2018

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When I started reading this book, I was surprised that the executors of Michael Crichton’s estate hadn’t raised some complaint about the plagiarism. Reading on it was apparent the executors clearly didn’t want to draw attention to one of Mr. Crichton’s novels and this travesty of an imitation. Jurassic park is notable for its rather loose approach to biology, the Great Zoo of China utterly ignores the laws of chemistry, physics, biology, logic and any attempt at credulity.

4 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

Unputdownable!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 January 2021

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Whew! What a ride! I just couldn't stop reading this book, and devoured it in one sitting. Yes, I know some people will compare it to 'Jurassic Park', but, as Mr Reilly himself points out in the Q & A section at the end, apart from scarily believable creatures and the non-stop action, it is actually unique. The only similarity is the one between Matthew Reilly and Michael Chrichton (both being phenomenal authors). He's come up with a cracking concept, set it somewhere nobody else has thought of, and basically just let rip! I loved it! More please!

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