Zoo by James Patterson (ghost-written by Michael Ledwidge).
Title: Zoo.
Author: James Patterson (ghost-written by Michael Ledwidge).
Genre: Fiction, science fiction, apocalyptic fiction, animals, thriller.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2012.
Summary: All over the world, brutal animal attacks are crippling entire cities. Jackson Oz, a young biologist, watches the escalating events with an increasing sense of dread. When he witnesses a coordinated lion ambush in Africa, the enormity of the violence to come becomes terrifyingly clear. With the help of ecologist Chloe Tousignant, Oz races to warn world leaders before it's too late. The attacks are growing in ferocity, cunning, and planning, and soon there will be no place left for humans to hide.
My rating: 5.5/10.
My review:
♥ I noticed something. Something that wasn’t quite right. Something I couldn’t let go.
That’s the way it happens sometimes. Life is flowing along like a fairy tale, and then you see something that you just can’t categorize. Something that starts filling your every thought, your every dream, your every waking moment.
♥ Sometimes I wish I could put my mouth in a cage. It’s always pushing me into corners. I’d rather picture myself in a coffin than in a cubicle.
♥ I remember how I was stuck when I heard that, in Sri Lanka, a full day before the first wave hit, the animals began to disappear inland. Birds, lizards, snakes, mongoose - gone. Elephants ran for higher ground. Dogs refused to go outdoors. Flamingos abandoned their low-lying breeding areas. Although the tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people, relatively few animals were reported dead. Animals’ more acute hearing and other senses might have enabled them to hear or feel the earth’s vibration, tipping them off to the approaching disaster long before humans realized what was going on. The animals knew something bad was up. They could feel the vibrations, feel it in their bones. The people, though? Oblivious. Even when the sea mysteriously retreated by a mile and a half, gathering itself for the eighty-foot wave that followed - what did they do? The children went down to the exposed ocean floor to gather seashells.
♥ At the next traffic-gutted intersection, he laughs to himself as he watches a guy trying to maneuver his cherry-red Lamborghini around a donkey cart. An Italian luxury car revving around a jackass is twenty-first-century India in a nutshell. Digital age, meet stone age.
♥ Why is this happening? Who knows, really?
Life and existence can never be fully understood. Stars are born only to explode. Creatures hunt other creatures, and then they die. The universe is a chaos of irrational forces wrestling with one another in a war without end. The human race is on the receiving end now.
♥ In officer training, one of the first things they tell you is to never give an order unless you’re sure it will be obeyed. If a law cannot be enforced, it’s easy for it to crumble. As Frederick the Great said, diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.