Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom is sort of like James Patterson's Zoo. Only this book concentrates a bit more on the human aspect of the situation..
Joe takes his son to the zoo for the day. While watching a snake exhibition, something goes wrong. The snake kills it's handler right in front of them. Joe tries to help, then realizes something is going on within the entire zoo.
They get safely inside a building with a few other survivors. From the windows everyone can see all sorts of animals attacking humans. The animals have gotten smart, learned to organized, and are not happy with their human "captors".
In this story, the small group of people are the focus. Yes, there are scene of animals attacking and trying to get to the humans. But the story is show more about the people themselves, and the inner turmoil within the group.
What kind of person do you think you would be in this situation? Would you protect only yourself, or be a hero and save others at your own risk? Would you naturally become a leader and have people willingly follow you? Or would you use bullying and physical force to lead and keep people in fear? Would you just be paralyzed with your fear?
I enjoyed this book. Although it was suspenseful, I didn't find it scary enough. show less

Wow...this book really is non-stop action throughout. Loved the beginning, the seemingly innocent story of Joe taking his son to the zoo for the day. A story that very quickly turns into a fully-fledged horror. Imagine all the animals turning against humans, working together to hunt you down and rip you apart. Gave me goosebumps more than a few times I can tell you!
What I love about Iain's books is that they mostly cover scenarios that could potentially actually happen. That's what makes them far more scary than some horrors that are completely unbelievable. The idea of this story becoming reality is totally terrifying, and that for me is the secret to a great horror.
I love visiting the zoo, but I imagine that I'll get the shivers on at show more least one occasion on my next visit! show less

This was a quick read - 2 hours - but I did spend most of it wondering if I should carry on. It was ridiculous. I liked the synopsis and the general idea - the animal apocalypse, basically, with humans suddenly becoming the bottom of the for chain - and following the misadventures of a group of people who happened to be visiting a zoo the day it happened. The characters were incomplete cliches - violent homophobic tattooed Scotsman, uppity smug rich businessman, helpless yet beautiful tortured young lady, etc. There was a cute kid who said cloying cute things that made everyone laugh. The dialogue felt unrealistic and the writing seemed stilted to me.
All that said, the idea and the rough plot, while ridiculous and not entirely fleshed show more out, was quite fun, like a blockbuster film. I am a sucker for post apocalyptic of all sorts and haven't read one quite like this before, and in the over saturated genre, that in itself is pretty impressive. Because of that I've upped from 2 to 3 stars. Hey, at least it isn't more zombies... show less

This was a quick read - 2 hours - but I did spend most of it wondering if I should carry on. It was ridiculous. I liked the synopsis and the general idea - the animal apocalypse, basically, with humans suddenly becoming the bottom of the for chain - and following the misadventures of a group of people who happened to be visiting a zoo the day it happened. The characters were incomplete cliches - violent homophobic tattooed Scotsman, uppity smug rich businessman, helpless yet beautiful tortured young lady, etc. There was a cute kid who said cloying cute things that made everyone laugh. The dialogue felt unrealistic and the writing seemed stilted to me.
All that said, the idea and the rough plot, while ridiculous and not entirely fleshed show more out, was quite fun, like a blockbuster film. I am a sucker for post apocalyptic of all sorts and haven't read one quite like this before, and in the over saturated genre, that in itself is pretty impressive. Because of that I've upped from 2 to 3 stars. Hey, at least it isn't more zombies... show less

Animal Kingdom: An Apocalyptic Novel, Welcome to the bottom of the food chain by Iain Rob Wright is an amazing horror story. As an animal lover, I was truly frightened. I've been bitten by cats, dogs & birds. It isn't pleasant or pain free. This story scared me. I gave it five stars.

Joe had taken his son to the zoo. Things did not work out according to plan.

"Four lions blocked the far entrance to the visitor’s centre and were snarling at the people inside. Each of their fangs was the size of a tent peg and freshly spilled blood dripped from their jaws. Joe had a feeling that he was about to have a very bad day."

After reaching a place of safety in the employee's lounge & blocking the door, they turned on the news to discover it wasn't show more isolated to the zoo.

" It didn’t matter how big or how small, anything with fur, claws, or fangs was seemingly possessed by a malevolent rage directed solely at the human race. Dogs, cats, and mice, to sheep, cows, and pigs – all were united in their quest to kill."

Trapped inside the zoo are survivors. One of them is unrelentingly obnoxious. The protagonist, Joe, finds every interaction with this arrogant Randall exhausting. He's a blight on the entire group.

And from an animal's point of view: "While he had spent his life inside a cage, held back from the world by unrelenting bars, the humans enjoyed a freedom that should have been a right of all living beings. The humans had taken his freedom away many years ago, but now he was going to take it back. He was going to take it back for every creature enslaved by man. Something had happened. Things had become unquestionably clear. Things that he had once not understood were now simple concepts that he had learned without even being aware of how. His mind had changed – he was no longer an animal content to be enslaved."

I received a complimentary copy from the author. That did not change my opinion for this review. show less

This was a great read--lots of action, interesting storyline & characters. Everything after the 'end' had me a bit confused, though, until I figured out the connections. There were some connections that left me wondering, like Caroline...the only tie-in I could see was Danny's backpack--a brief mention. I would rather have known more about what happened to Joe & Danny than having another character introduced at that late juncture. I was happy to see that we did find out what happened to Jane.
I also found it odd that Randall's name would be misspelled in 'Clocking Off,' Jeff's part of the story. Being that it was the first after the epilogue, it was confusing until I was able to put 2 & w together with the hints of meetings and asthma.
I show more hate to be 'that person' when it comes to grammatical errors, but it does disrupt the flow of the story when I'm reading & have to re-read the same section a couple of times to get the correct word/meaning.
Still, I did love the story! I would be interested in a sequel to this one, if for nothing more than absolute closure on Joe & Danny...maybe find out if there was an absolute win on the part of the animals or whether there were survivors that made it to safety & were able to rebuild. show less

"Animal Kingdom: An Apocalyptic Novel" kept my interest all the way through the story. At 82% through on my Kindle, I saw the story ended and an epilogue remained. I just scratched my head wondering why the story suddenly ended. The author did include four more short stories beyond the epilogue about others who weren't at the zoo but were talked about. These answered some of my questions, but I would have rather liked to see what happened to Joe and Danny after they make their escape and find out why Danny's backpack was in the middle of a pack of murdered humans. The author claims that this is a stand-alone book, so I assume those answers will never come.

Good Story! I downloaded a couple free books from the same author and hope they show more are just as good or better. Animal Kingdom is akin to Patterson's "ZOO" and worth reading!

John Podlaski, author
"Cherries - A Vietnam War Novel" and "When Can I Stop Running?" show less