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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
Basically, if you kill someone (is that the only way?) you end up with a literal animal manifestation of your guilt. On the plus side, they come with free magical abilities (like the main character's ability to find lost things). On the down side, people know how you got your animal (your zoo) and discrimination is rampant.
It's a really interesting concept; something that I haven't quite seen anywhere else (The Golden Compass is vaguely similar, at least in the animal companions). And the world is just gritty and dark enough that it felt like a dark echo of what our world could be / have been. Unfortunately, a lot of details are left unclear. What exactly is the Undertow? How do people get which animals? What did the main character actually do to get her Sloth? How different are the animals from their wild brethren?
Unfortunately, as interesting as the world building is, the plot isn't that great. I'll admit, I actually stopped paying as close attention to what was going on about halfway through. Then some more things happened and the story was over and unfortunately I didn't feel any particular urge to go back and figure out how we'd gotten from point B to point Z.
On top of that, I didn't particularly care for the main character. When you open the first few chapters by writing scam emails and stealing people's money, you know there's a bit of an ethical conundrum going on. A character like that can work perfectly well as a main character in a book, but at least for me, you have to work twice as hard for it. Zoo City didn't quite make it.
So it goes. It was interesting enough to read.
It's a really interesting concept; something that I haven't quite seen anywhere else (The Golden Compass is vaguely similar, at least in the animal companions). And the world is just gritty and dark enough that it felt like a dark echo of what our world could be / have been. Unfortunately, a lot of details are left unclear. What exactly is the Undertow? How do people get which animals? What did the main character actually do to get her Sloth? How different are the animals from their wild brethren?
Unfortunately, as interesting as the world building is, the plot isn't that great. I'll admit, I actually stopped paying as close attention to what was going on about halfway through. Then some more things happened and the story was over and unfortunately I didn't feel any particular urge to go back and figure out how we'd gotten from point B to point Z.
On top of that, I didn't particularly care for the main character. When you open the first few chapters by writing scam emails and stealing people's money, you know there's a bit of an ethical conundrum going on. A character like that can work perfectly well as a main character in a book, but at least for me, you have to work twice as hard for it. Zoo City didn't quite make it.
So it goes. It was interesting enough to read.
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Fascinating concept. I'd like to read more from this world.
Weird book, great world building. The story goes in weird pacing ways. And somehow I forgotten the heroine's name during the course of the book. How tired am I for that to happen?
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Zoo City may have an urban fantasy setting but the plot, diction, and tone all iterate naturally from William Gibson's cyberpunk heritage. It is a bleak mystery noir with an imaginative twist on a number of fantasy tropes, with a protagonist whose insignificance is consistently underlined throughout the narrative. While it does meander a bit, especially during the final act, I will mentally file it away between Dune and Snow Crash under "I am Totally Confused About What's Happening but I'm Loving the Ride Anyway."
Such a cool premise and setting for a mystery noir. I loved the characters and vivid descriptions. The plot was a tad clunky going into the third act.
I liked this book, but also found it very confusing at times. I am not sure if this was due to the audio narrator who did not distinguish voices well, or that I was not paying good enough attention.
Dark urban fantasy set in S. Africa, a quarter of the way into this library book, I was was worried it would trigger my junkie prejudices. I ended up really appreciate this author's depiction of life after an addict gets clean.
I love how complicated the main character's association with the physical manifestation of her guilt was. I love how the author acknowledged that there are some things that all of the amends-making in the world can't fix.
I would read the sequel.
I love how complicated the main character's association with the physical manifestation of her guilt was. I love how the author acknowledged that there are some things that all of the amends-making in the world can't fix.
I would read the sequel.
During the 1980s, a strange plague swept across the world and in its wake, it left a phenomenon that would be known as ‘animalling'.
'Animalling' is so called because it leaves anyone guilty of a serious crime partnered with an animal familiar, a mashavi. In Zinzi December, Lauren Beukes' main protagonist of Zoo City's, case, the familiar in question is a Sloth. [I personally really like the fact that the animal familiars weren't the more "typical" animals you might've expected; it's not a black cat, a wolf, an owl - it's a Sloth, a Maltese and an albino alligator.]
With the mashavi comes a gift, a shavi. Zinzi's is the ability to find lost items; a wedding ring, a book, a photo album. She doesn't usually go looking for missing people, but between the e-mail scams she works for a criminal organisation and the finder's fee she earns for locating said wedding ring, book and photo album, she never seems to be able to make a dent in the ever growing debt she owes to aformentioned criminal organisation, so when offered a generous wage just to find Songweza Radebe, one half of the pop sensation iJusi, she says yes.
Little did she know that things are rarely as straightforward as they seem in Lauren Beukes' world.
As with the previous books of Lauren Beukes that I've read, The Shining Girls and Broken Monsters, it takes a [good] while to really get into the story of Zoo City, but, also in common with previous works, once you've gotten past the slow beginning [and middle], it becomes almost impossible to put the book down.
It gets inside your head, in the best way possible: the choices made aren't always the "obviously right" ones and Zinzi isn't the typically flawless heroine, but she is an interesting one.
The few negative things I think are worth mentioning are:
- that the book is filled with South African slang (which seems to be a mix of Zulu, Shona and Afrikaans), and while most of it is made guessable by the context, not all is and this bothers me. While I definitely don't wish that the book had been filled with footnotes, maybe a collection of common slang in the back could've been useful.
- that the ending came a bit out of the blue. There had been some alluding to it, but I think that it could've been built up a bit more. It almost feels as if Lauren had spent so much energy building up the character(s) that she couldn't hold back any longer once she started to reach the point of unravelling.
That said, my overall impression is a positive one. I loved that it was set in South Africa, I found the idea of animalling very interesting and I've so far always really liked Lauren Beukes' less than typical characters.
'Animalling' is so called because it leaves anyone guilty of a serious crime partnered with an animal familiar, a mashavi. In Zinzi December, Lauren Beukes' main protagonist of Zoo City's, case, the familiar in question is a Sloth. [I personally really like the fact that the animal familiars weren't the more "typical" animals you might've expected; it's not a black cat, a wolf, an owl - it's a Sloth, a Maltese and an albino alligator.]
With the mashavi comes a gift, a shavi. Zinzi's is the ability to find lost items; a wedding ring, a book, a photo album. She doesn't usually go looking for missing people, but between the e-mail scams she works for a criminal organisation and the finder's fee she earns for locating said wedding ring, book and photo album, she never seems to be able to make a dent in the ever growing debt she owes to aformentioned criminal organisation, so when offered a generous wage just to find Songweza Radebe, one half of the pop sensation iJusi, she says yes.
Little did she know that things are rarely as straightforward as they seem in Lauren Beukes' world.
As with the previous books of Lauren Beukes that I've read, The Shining Girls and Broken Monsters, it takes a [good] while to really get into the story of Zoo City, but, also in common with previous works, once you've gotten past the slow beginning [and middle], it becomes almost impossible to put the book down.
It gets inside your head, in the best way possible: the choices made aren't always the "obviously right" ones and Zinzi isn't the typically flawless heroine, but she is an interesting one.
The few negative things I think are worth mentioning are:
- that the book is filled with South African slang (which seems to be a mix of Zulu, Shona and Afrikaans), and while most of it is made guessable by the context, not all is and this bothers me. While I definitely don't wish that the book had been filled with footnotes, maybe a collection of common slang in the back could've been useful.
- that the ending came a bit out of the blue. There had been some alluding to it, but I think that it could've been built up a bit more. It almost feels as if Lauren had spent so much energy building up the character(s) that she couldn't hold back any longer once she started to reach the point of unravelling.
That said, my overall impression is a positive one. I loved that it was set in South Africa, I found the idea of animalling very interesting and I've so far always really liked Lauren Beukes' less than typical characters.