Zoo Mass Market Paperback – December 17, 2013

I used to read all of Patterson's book but I have not read one in a while. I watched the Zoo on TV and I loved the series and then it just ended. I decided to read the book to see what I missed. What I missed was the entire series. The book was not even close, actually it was so far removed I could not find even a semblance to the series. In addition to that, the book was terrible. It was disjointed and difficult to figure out where he was going with the plot. Unfortunately I never found out what he was trying to do and then it ended. I was extremely disappointed and wish the book had been as good as the series.

The book had a great premise, but OMG does it fail to deliver. The writing feels like it's aimed at young adults - it's very simplistic, very black and white. The characters are flat, and underdeveloped. Rather than explore consequences of significant character actions (or inactions), the story just jumps ahead, by years at a time, leaving dangling plotlines in its wake. The author adds in odd pop-culture and celebrity references from years ago, which don't add anything to the book. They do, however, detract from the story and because they are old events, confuse the timeline. Plus there's a moralistic, preaching tone throughout that is really off-putting to me.I have read statements from other reviewers that Patterson doesn't write all of his books anymore, and essentially leases out his name for ghostwriters to publish under. My guess is that's what happened here ... because this is NOT indicative of Patterson's early work at all.

Very slow reading. I wanted to read this book as I had seen the tv show. Needless to to the tv show was a 100percent better. Other than the animals going crazy nothing else was correlating to the tv show. I was disappointed that in the book most of the people died except oz and Chloe and their child Eli. It has some interesting points when it spoke of the phermones . I did but zoo 2 as well so I plan to read that to see if it gets better. If you are buying this book just because of the movie you will be disappointed

Pros:• The reading level is very low (middle grade), making it an easy read for a wide audience.• The book was sufficiently interesting to keep me reading. In fact, I read approximately half the book at a single setting.• Scattered parts of the book were pretty good.Cons:• Way too many things just didn’t make sense, were inconsistent, or were totally unbelievable. For example, Oz doesn’t have a job (probably has huge student loan debts), but never seems to have any money problems and thinks nothing of flying to Africa on a moment’s notice. And what’s the deal with Oz and Chloe having identical dreams without explanation or reoccurrence? And if cell phone use is part of the cause, then why eliminate all use of electricity?• Oz, the protagonist, is incredibly stupid for someone supposedly super smart. He is totally into researching why animals are becoming hyper-aggressive, and yet he thinks nothing of leaving his highly dangerous chimpanzee in the care of an old lady and girlfriend (with a totally predictable outcome). And why didn’t he show the video of the lions to a newspaper or TV news reporters. And following dogs into an underground lair?• The science is extremely weak and unbelievable. Lots of it didn’t make sense; worse, lots of the problems were totally unnecessary. It makes me wish the book had been if written by an someone with Michael Crichton’s knowledge and ability. The book cried out for more research to make it more plausible. Surely, they could have got a science advisor to read an advance copy of the book and point out its many obvious scientific howlers.• The book’s structure was largely flat with little in the way of increasing tension building to a climax. There is a five-year gap in the middle of the book that comes out of nowhere and was totally unnecessary. The book didn’t come close to having a well-defined structure. There are no subplots or deeper meaning. The protagonist starts out immature and doesn’t evolve or mature during the course of the book. The book bounces between points of view, but the level and style of the narration remains identical. The book needed some serious developmental editing.• The female characters are one-dimensional and only there to look good and gratify Oz’s needs. Even Chloe, a biologist, only seems there to sexually attractive to Oz. The level of sexism is embarrassingly high by today’s standards and seems primarily intended for a teenage boy readership. The characters make stupid choices, don’t learn from their mistakes, and don’t grow or mature over time. It is hard to like or care about the characters and what happens to them.• The large font size and wide spacing between the lines made the book considerably longer (and therefore more expensive to print) than necessary. It made me fell like the publisher wanted me to think I was getting more book content (sort of like the inexpensive extra slice of bread in the middle of a Big Mac).• The book left me wishing I had invested the time reading any of a number of better books in my reading list.Bottom Line:• If you have low expectations and will be satisfied by the book version of a B movie, this can be a fun way to kill a few hours. If not, there are a very large number of better-written science fiction / horror novels.

This book is ridiculous. I'm willing to grant the premise, that's part of the whole suspension-of-disbelief thing. Maybe something is making animals more aggressive. But ALL animals except humans? I guess not fish, or reptiles, it doesn't mention them, but all mammals and birds. It's too much. Even chimps, so very closely related to humans, are subject to this terrifying behavior. Even given how crazy that is, the fact is, not only do the animals become more aggressive, they all turn into geniuses. And not just geniuses of their species, they all become planners and group thinkers. They all have a purpose to killing people, it's not just that they are more aggressive.I reserve one star for books I simply could not finish. This book was short enough for me to get through it so I'm giving it two stars.I am not recommending it.

I bought this book shortly after seeing the ad on TV for the series made of it. It starts slow & the main character is erratic at best. On a whim he adopts, he likes to think of what he did as freeing a captive wild animal from barbaric experimentation, a young chimpanzee. He give up his entire career by sticking like glue to a theory he has about HAV so he is forced to live in an old factory he has converted into an apartment where he is constantly bothered by the sound of the above ground trains.When the plot finally gets going the book is pretty good though the editing surprised me it was poor at best. The plot has an authentic ring to it. The solution was at first over simplified but we humans like our creature comforts & the ending is really no ending at all. However it was much better then a cliff hanger meaning you must read the sequel to get the true ending.I don't see how they will encompass the entire book in 3 months & I have my doubts it can be reduced for TV & be any good I guess time will tell.

I came at this book via the TV series. The show isn't perfect, but it offers an interesting premise and I wanted to follow it up by reading the "source" material, after all, wasn't every book I've read better than the TV / film version?Having never read anything by Patterson, I wasn't sure what I'd get. Boy, was I disappointed.If the TV series is couch 'n' TV, tuck up with a pizza and enjoy the ride, the novel is ... a spiritless wasteland with not even a hint of pizza.I've read that John Wyndam would write a draft of his stories, and then rewrite it through again and again, start to finish, until he was satisfied with the result. On that basis, Patterson took a redeye from A to B and jotted down some ideas and then sent them into his publisher to print. This is a collection of scenes in short chapters, telling a very thin story, populated by people with zero description or personality whom you couldn't care less about.There is one lengthy section near the start of the book, after the sequence where we are introduced to the protagonists' pet ape (who never really features in the story in any *meaningful* way), set in Africa. If every chapter had been crafted like this I might have been more satisfied. But, no, 500 pages and 100 chapters later, everything is rushed, with little or no purposeful context or engagement: Chapter 1: this happens; moving onto to Chapter 2: and this happens; now rush to Chapter 3 ... Chapter 100: the end, royalty cheque is in the post.The greatest disappointment for me is that this *could* have been a quite spectacular series of books, a trilogy at least. Using no more than the contents of this story but, returning to the food analogy, some meat on the bones.Don't bother.

This storyline was intrigueing, starting with zoo lions going on rampage.. Then enter the main character, a broke scientist living with a rescued pet chimp in a city apartment the in middle of the city.... Realistic? The book was a little disjointed in areas and a bit far fetched but I guess it's fiction so one has to use that thing called 'imagination' to get an idea of this book. If this was real life I'd be worried. The ending was too abrupt and could have been better.. If a plane flies into a mass flock of birds (or bats in the book) and the plane loses an engine, plummeting towards the ground, there us no way that anyone can miraculously right the plane and get the lost engine working again... This book just didn't do it for me.. Try Honeymoon instead, it's more believable.

I have never read anything by James Patterson before but decided to give this a go after one of my friends raved about the TV series based on it.I was hooked from the beginning and couldn't put it down. It was non stop from the start and rather scary at times. The most worrying thing about it is that it could happen as we are all very reliant on technology.

It's a little bit like Jurassic Park without the tension.We start off with a dysfunctional scientist called Oz who has raised a chimp from birth. When 'she creatures start to act differently Oz meets a young well respected French Scientist whom he falls in love with They go around the world together to try and find a cure for what has caused all the animals to turn against humans.It is okay, I finished the book, but was looking forward to a book as gripping as Michael Crcithton's Jurassic Park, instead of this, I received a mediocre book, with no tension, no thoughts of "Just another paragraph" but a mildly thought of "When is it going to end"

I enjoyed the start of the book but after couple of chapters it just went rubbish. It seemed like it been rushed and just a load of jumbled rubbish. I carried on with story and the last few chapters were really well written and I enjoyed them shame the whole book wasn't the same. The book been really hyped up and I was disappointed if I had stopped half way through I would rated 1 but last chapters made up for it a bit. Shame as I really enjoyed James Patterson other books especially his red series