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Cover of Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor

How long does it take to read Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor?

Xiran Jay Zhao

Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao takes about 6 hours 27 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 6 hours 27 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2022. 352 pages, about 96,800 words. Written for children.

13 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 10 hours 45 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 6 hours 27 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 2 minutes

The page count is the median across 9 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

12-year-old Zack never had many opportunities to learn about his Chinese heritage. His single mom was busy enough making sure they got by, and his schools never taught anything except Western history and myths. So Zack is woefully unprepared when he discovers he was born to host the spirit of the First Emperor of China for a vital mission: sealing the leaking portal to the Chinese underworld before the upcoming Ghost Month blows it wide open. The mission takes an immediate wrong turn when the First Emperor botches his attempt to possess Zack’s body and binds to Zack’s AR gaming headset instead, leading to a battle where Zack’s mom’s soul gets taken by demons. Now, with one of history’s most infamous tyrants yapping in his headset, Zack must journey across China to heist magical artifacts and defeat figures from history and myth, all while learning to wield the emperor’s incredible water dragon powers. And if Zack can’t finish the mission in time, the spirits of the underworld will flood into the mortal realm, and he could lose his mom forever.

Subjects: Children's fiction, Good and evil, fiction, Magic, fiction, Chinese americans, fiction, China, fiction

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