Reading progress update: I've read 21%.

The Great Zoo of China - Matthew Reilly

I just want to have some mindless fun with dragons overrunning a zoo and eating people, but the price of that is apparently putting up with SUPER REPETITIVE WRITING. Examples (paraphrased):

 

Main Character: These dragons are huge! Those big ones must be the size of airliners and those medium ones must be the size of buses.

 

Zoo Employee: The biggest dragons are the size of airliners and the medium ones are the size of buses.

 

MC: I’ll bet those little dragons weigh a ton!

 

ZE: These little dragons weigh a ton.

 

MC: This ambassador’s aide is good at melting into the background. I keep forgetting he’s here.

 

MC: [16 pages later] This ambassador’s aide professionally blends into backgrounds. I keep forgetting he’s here.

 

It’s like Reilly has ZERO faith in the reader’s ability to retain info, so he just keeps repeating it over and over.

 

I’m also getting a strong anti-China vibe. Jurassic Park proved that your visionaries can be well-intentioned and don’t have to be cartoonishly evil (even if your greedy corporate overlords do). Reilly has apparently decided good intentions are boring and is leaning hard into the greedy corporate overlord theme, and the greedy corporation is the Chinese government, so it's already getting pretty racist up in here. We haven’t even gotten to the dragons eating all the guests yet and there’s already been some ham-fisted white savioring.

 

Ugh.