What Zig shares with C is orthogonality, with a large power-to-weight ratio, meaning it's a small language grammar with powerful range.

But Zig also improves on C's safety in many ways, not least checked arithmetic enabled by default in safe release modes, along with bounds checked memory accesses, function return values that cannot be ignored, checked syscall error handling, explicit allocations, comptime over macros, a short learning curve and remarkable readability.

It's hard for systems programmers not to appreciate any of these qualities in isolation.

A brilliant language wouldn't stuffer from use-after-free in 2021, or use file import as module concept.

Syntax is almost completely irrelevant.

If syntax was irrelevant, ALGOL like systems programming languages would still dominate.

Not Lisp?

Lisp failure in mainstream market is more related to mismanagement, cheap UNIX workstations and AI Winter, than syntax.

But hey, its spirit lives on most managed languages, Julia, Closure, WebAssembly text files and plenty of other stuff Lisp based.