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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
I enjoyed it, dragged a bit in the middle, but that's life. Was looking at my cat sideways for a bit after I finished it :-)
What did I think? Well, I want to love it more than I did. It's a good, solid novel: I do love the idea of zoo's: brilliant. Absolutely. And I loved the additions of internet, tv, and scholarly debates on zoo's. But overall, to be honest, I read the book too fast and because I was paging through waiting to feel like I'd really gotten into it. I might have to give it another go because it might deserve more than I've given it, but at the moment: Brilliant ideas, solid enough story, but I simply wasn't gripped or transported. Part of that might be my lack of familiarity with Joburg: I've been to the city but don't know it well, so I was trying hard to picture it accurately, which I can't put the same cerebral effort into for a purely made up world.
Urban fantasy that isn't set in Boring, USA? Yes please. Beautiful writing and great characters are a bonus.
Very impressive world building, but I'm really over books which have a single trans character - of a sex worker - who is so insignificant to the plot, that her murder gets more attention than her personality. Plus she keeps getting misgendered so the reader wouldn't somehow miss the fact she is trans.
Fucking bs.
Fucking bs.
Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City is a delightful blend of noir and contemporary fantasy, set in exotic Johannesburg, South Africa. As soon as I read the first chapter, I was hooked. It was so good I read it in less than a day. There’s a lot going on in this story. There’s a killer mystery and an interesting premise (that I’ll get to in a second). But what makes this book is its atmosphere. Without beating the reader over the head with details, you get a sense of the rickety, crime ridden tenements where the main character spends most of her time so so strong that you can almost smell the stink of it. The dialogue is peppered with Afrikaans and several African languages and the cast is wildly diverse. I tip my metaphorical hat to Beukes’s skill as a writer...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
While I preferred the SF genre of [b:Moxyland|3491640|Moxyland|Lauren Beukes|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1328732006s/3491640.jpg|3533237], Zoo City is a definite step up for Beukes. The writing is crisp, vivid, funny and lurid. You feel like you can smell the scenes, they are so well-defined.
The fantasy aspect mostly didn't even bother me much, as it was poetically metaphoric rather than the tepid wish-fulfillment of many fantasy stories. In fact, I kind of love the idea that guilt can be made manifest. This book asks the question "what would it be like if you couldn't hide your guilt?" The answer is more disturbing that you'd think.
The fantasy aspect mostly didn't even bother me much, as it was poetically metaphoric rather than the tepid wish-fulfillment of many fantasy stories. In fact, I kind of love the idea that guilt can be made manifest. This book asks the question "what would it be like if you couldn't hide your guilt?" The answer is more disturbing that you'd think.
http://www.rantingdragon.com/zoo-city-by-lauren-beukes/
Zoo City is a standalone novel set in a fictional Johannesburg, South Africa. In Zoo City, if you commit a felonious sin, the Undertow comes for you and marks you with first an animal companion that serves as a manifestation of your sin, and second a supernatural talent. Both the animal and the talent are called “mashavi.” The sinners are called “aposymbiots,” and are relegated to living in a slum known as Zoo City.
Zinzi December is an aposymbiot: her animal is a sloth named Sloth, and her talent is tracking lost things. While she prefers not to track lost persons, money is tight. So when she’s offered a sizeable sum for locating a missing young pop star, she accepts. Zinzi finds out, however, that with big money comes big risk.
Great dialogue
Zoo City captures a textured, living world, where even the minor characters are vivid. In part, this is due to great dialogue—not the kind of highly stylistic dialogue where everyone sounds clever or cool, à la Elmore Leonard, but one that lends a verisimilitude to this breathing world. Each person sounds distinct enough to convey his or her personality, yet similar enough to constitute communities. Zoo City is written in the first person from the perspective of the articulate Zinzi. Zinzi’s observations and the rhythms of the dialogue together serve as the heartbeat of Zoo City.
World building through literature
I also enjoyed glimpses into this world via its literature. Between certain chapters, we are presented with excerpts of writing: Zinzi’s 419 scam e-mails (if I ever got such eloquently written scam e-mails, I’d probably frame them), interviews with aposymbiotic prisoners (including one whose mashavi is a butterfly suggestive of Chuang-Tzu’s butterfly), and movie reviews of a documentary featuring the first known aposymbiot, a film student turned warlord whose animal was a penguin and talent was psychic torture. I really liked this approach to world-building; it educates and entertains.
Unique fantasy
Even though the mashavi animals are partly reminiscent of Philip Pullman’s daemons from His Dark Materials trilogy, Beukes’s version is highly original. The animals are in part an embarrassment as a mark of sin, but there are also those humans who adopt real animals for “street cred.” For the aposymbiots who don’t get to choose their animals, however, life can be difficult if your animal is perceived as wimpy. As the Butterfly prisoner explains, “Don’t matter what you did, you got a bad-ass animal in here, you’re a bad-ass too. And it don’t matter how many people you killed, you got a Chipmunk or a Squirrel, you’re gonna be a bitch. Way it is.”
Why should you read this book?
Zoo City is one of the most original and captivating books I have read; I was hooked in five pages. Zinzi is also one of my all-time favorite heroines—she’s spunky, difficult, articulate, emotional, tough, intelligent, and repentant. If you don’t read Zoo City, you’re missing out on one of the best modern books in and outside the fantasy genre.
Zoo City is a standalone novel set in a fictional Johannesburg, South Africa. In Zoo City, if you commit a felonious sin, the Undertow comes for you and marks you with first an animal companion that serves as a manifestation of your sin, and second a supernatural talent. Both the animal and the talent are called “mashavi.” The sinners are called “aposymbiots,” and are relegated to living in a slum known as Zoo City.
Zinzi December is an aposymbiot: her animal is a sloth named Sloth, and her talent is tracking lost things. While she prefers not to track lost persons, money is tight. So when she’s offered a sizeable sum for locating a missing young pop star, she accepts. Zinzi finds out, however, that with big money comes big risk.
Great dialogue
Zoo City captures a textured, living world, where even the minor characters are vivid. In part, this is due to great dialogue—not the kind of highly stylistic dialogue where everyone sounds clever or cool, à la Elmore Leonard, but one that lends a verisimilitude to this breathing world. Each person sounds distinct enough to convey his or her personality, yet similar enough to constitute communities. Zoo City is written in the first person from the perspective of the articulate Zinzi. Zinzi’s observations and the rhythms of the dialogue together serve as the heartbeat of Zoo City.
World building through literature
I also enjoyed glimpses into this world via its literature. Between certain chapters, we are presented with excerpts of writing: Zinzi’s 419 scam e-mails (if I ever got such eloquently written scam e-mails, I’d probably frame them), interviews with aposymbiotic prisoners (including one whose mashavi is a butterfly suggestive of Chuang-Tzu’s butterfly), and movie reviews of a documentary featuring the first known aposymbiot, a film student turned warlord whose animal was a penguin and talent was psychic torture. I really liked this approach to world-building; it educates and entertains.
Unique fantasy
Even though the mashavi animals are partly reminiscent of Philip Pullman’s daemons from His Dark Materials trilogy, Beukes’s version is highly original. The animals are in part an embarrassment as a mark of sin, but there are also those humans who adopt real animals for “street cred.” For the aposymbiots who don’t get to choose their animals, however, life can be difficult if your animal is perceived as wimpy. As the Butterfly prisoner explains, “Don’t matter what you did, you got a bad-ass animal in here, you’re a bad-ass too. And it don’t matter how many people you killed, you got a Chipmunk or a Squirrel, you’re gonna be a bitch. Way it is.”
Why should you read this book?
Zoo City is one of the most original and captivating books I have read; I was hooked in five pages. Zinzi is also one of my all-time favorite heroines—she’s spunky, difficult, articulate, emotional, tough, intelligent, and repentant. If you don’t read Zoo City, you’re missing out on one of the best modern books in and outside the fantasy genre.
Awesome. This is one of the most brilliant books by a South African Author that doesn't require a degree in ass sniffery to read. Pulse pounding, tough as nails and an oringal work indeed. And that's just the author. The critics have been calling it Chandeler-esque and I reckon if they want to call it that, they can. I just call in brilliant. I'm simple that way.
An interesting premise, fast-moving writing and lonely characters. I'm surprised this is young adult. I thoroughly enjoyed the rich setting and details of location, and I really wish the plot and characters had moved me.