Review: The Human Zoo

The Human Zoo by Kolin Wood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



4 Stars ★★★★

The Human Zoo is a fast paced novel by author Kolin Wood; it is set in a post-apocalyptic London and is book one in the Human Zoo series. Wow...what a ride it is.
The book is basically split into two stories which will soon come together as one further on into the series. There are numerous strong characters which makes this a very captivating read.
The strongest character is The General. The General wants to build an army, a new society, from the inside of a young offenders institution. This led to Juliana being taken from her home in a brutal fashion leaving her young son hiding in a closet. Juliana will be subjected to years of torture and abuse at the hands of inmates within the institution, is there any way she can escape this madness and depravity? Only the strong and merciless will survive afterall.
Within this institution there are power struggles between inmates, so much so that the The General fears that he will lose any power he has over the prison grounds.
Harold the crazy inmate who envisages himself as a surgeon loves to practice his skills on captured women and other disobedient inmates. He has a job to do afterall...to keep The Numbers all fed and content within the deepest and darkest depths of the prison. For if The Numbers escape there will be hell to pay...with blood, guts and gore galore.

Beyond the prison Juliana's father Teddy is the creator of The Pit where people of the broken city pay to watch fights. Two fighters will enter the pit but only one will come back out. Who will be the reigning champion? Teddy isn't going to make it easy though as his aim is to make as much money as possible in any way he can. Money is power within this new society.
All Juliana wants is her son back and to find her father who walked out on her many years ago. If anyone can survive out there her madman of a father could.

Filled with many descriptive gore scenes and a well developed fast plot I highly recommend this book to horror fans. My reason for 4 stars and not 5 is due to the novel needing more editing. Words are often written twice or are missing completely which lead to some of my reading being a bit disjointed. I wouldn't say it ends on a 'cliffhanger' but it's definitely left open for book two. I can't wait to know what happens next!





View all my reviews