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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
Book club book. Loads of interesting characters, but most of them died/wound up in a coma. I appreciate the skill with which the novel was executed, but I didn't actually enjoy it. That's not a comment on the author--the book was very well written. It is Very Impressive for a first novel. It's not my cup of tea though (murder mysteries just tend to be too grim for me).
PHEW. That was an unexpectedly gripping and shocking ending to a book with a good number of twists and turns, set in a well-crafted and thoroughly flushed out universe. Well done.
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes first came to my attention when it won a bunch of awards, notably the Arthur C Clarke in 2011. It caught my attention further because it’s set in South Africa rather than the all-too-common US. The other thing that piqued my interest was Galactic Suburbia discussing the premise, many episodes ago (and actually, I think that happened after I bought the ebook from Angry Robot, but never mind).
Zoo City is set in Johannesburg in a contemporary world with a supernatural twist: people who have committed crimes have their guilt manifest as an animal. The animal is bound to them, a bit like a familiar, particularly as it comes with some minor magical ability, and if it dies, its person dies shortly afterwards. Different countries responded to the animal shift in different ways. In South Africa, the animaled are seen as a lower class, have difficulty finding jobs and live on the fringes of society. Other countries are much less nice to their animaled.
Zinzi has a sloth and her ability if finding lost things by following the tenuous threads that bind people to the things they care about. A job finding a ring dropped down a drain doesn’t end as she hoped and Zinzi finds herself thrust into slightly more dubious work. Things spiral out of control and by the end of the book she has had to fight for her life more than once.
I enjoyed Zinzi as a character. She’s tough because she has to be to survive, which makes her a bit kick-arse but not unrealistically so. I liked that Beukes avoided a particular cliche near the start which a different author might have used to show that Zinzi’s not really a bad person and has a heart of gold deep down. Zinzi’s realist tendencies tend to win out over any feelings of sympathy she might feel towards strangers. Of course this doesn’t make her saint, but then if she were a saint, she wouldn’t have an animal. It was consistent and the exploration of the nature of guilt was aspect I liked.
Zoo City offers a sharp view into the edges of South African society. It is at times quite confronting and there is quite a bit of fast paced action interspersed with Zinzi’s more sedate attempts to work out what’s going on. From the first page I was impressed by Beukes’s tight writing which kept me interested all the way through to the end.
I highly recommend this book to everyone. The fantasy elements aren’t very strong (they only just register above the background level of real-world African mysticism which also features in the novel) and I think it would be enjoyed by a fantasy fans and non-fans alike. The insight into South African life is interesting and refreshing in the plethora of US-set urban fantasy books.
5 / 5 stars
Zoo City is set in Johannesburg in a contemporary world with a supernatural twist: people who have committed crimes have their guilt manifest as an animal. The animal is bound to them, a bit like a familiar, particularly as it comes with some minor magical ability, and if it dies, its person dies shortly afterwards. Different countries responded to the animal shift in different ways. In South Africa, the animaled are seen as a lower class, have difficulty finding jobs and live on the fringes of society. Other countries are much less nice to their animaled.
Zinzi has a sloth and her ability if finding lost things by following the tenuous threads that bind people to the things they care about. A job finding a ring dropped down a drain doesn’t end as she hoped and Zinzi finds herself thrust into slightly more dubious work. Things spiral out of control and by the end of the book she has had to fight for her life more than once.
I enjoyed Zinzi as a character. She’s tough because she has to be to survive, which makes her a bit kick-arse but not unrealistically so. I liked that Beukes avoided a particular cliche near the start which a different author might have used to show that Zinzi’s not really a bad person and has a heart of gold deep down. Zinzi’s realist tendencies tend to win out over any feelings of sympathy she might feel towards strangers. Of course this doesn’t make her saint, but then if she were a saint, she wouldn’t have an animal. It was consistent and the exploration of the nature of guilt was aspect I liked.
Zoo City offers a sharp view into the edges of South African society. It is at times quite confronting and there is quite a bit of fast paced action interspersed with Zinzi’s more sedate attempts to work out what’s going on. From the first page I was impressed by Beukes’s tight writing which kept me interested all the way through to the end.
I highly recommend this book to everyone. The fantasy elements aren’t very strong (they only just register above the background level of real-world African mysticism which also features in the novel) and I think it would be enjoyed by a fantasy fans and non-fans alike. The insight into South African life is interesting and refreshing in the plethora of US-set urban fantasy books.
5 / 5 stars
Zinzi December finds lost things. That’s her shavi, the gift she received, along with her Sloth, for her crime. No one really knows where the animals come from, or what the Undertow is, but everyone knows that is what is waiting for the animalled. It will swallow you up and drag you down.
Zinzi has been living in Zoo City for quite some time, a recovering addict, she is still paying off her drug debts. And she will take any job she can. But when a client is murdered she gets pulled into a missing persons case. She doesn’t usually do those. No stolen goods, no missing persons, those are her rules.
This is the perfect antidote to [b:Gabriel's Gate|12976819|Gabriel's Gate|Tom Galvin|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41eKPOm7HrL._SL75_.jpg|18111224], in many ways it is the opposite of that book, whereas Gabriel’s Gate is all about the surface, Zoo City is about what is underneath. Beukes gives her readers enough credit to figure out what is going on in her book. She launches straight into the story and doesn’t bother with overlong descriptions of how things work. Sometimes that can really just fall flat and leave the reader confused and annoyed. In this case Beukes gives us just enough information to keep up.
And then of course there are all the things that this book talks about, racism, prejudice, all that important society stuff. Zinzi is on the outskirts of society, the animalled are the lowest of the low. Their crimes are made visible for all to see and to judge.
There is so much to enjoy about this book. It has great pacing, you certainly won’t be bored while reading it. And I certainly would be delighted to read more in this world. Actually, that is my one complaint, it ended, and I want to know more!
Zinzi has been living in Zoo City for quite some time, a recovering addict, she is still paying off her drug debts. And she will take any job she can. But when a client is murdered she gets pulled into a missing persons case. She doesn’t usually do those. No stolen goods, no missing persons, those are her rules.
This is the perfect antidote to [b:Gabriel's Gate|12976819|Gabriel's Gate|Tom Galvin|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41eKPOm7HrL._SL75_.jpg|18111224], in many ways it is the opposite of that book, whereas Gabriel’s Gate is all about the surface, Zoo City is about what is underneath. Beukes gives her readers enough credit to figure out what is going on in her book. She launches straight into the story and doesn’t bother with overlong descriptions of how things work. Sometimes that can really just fall flat and leave the reader confused and annoyed. In this case Beukes gives us just enough information to keep up.
And then of course there are all the things that this book talks about, racism, prejudice, all that important society stuff. Zinzi is on the outskirts of society, the animalled are the lowest of the low. Their crimes are made visible for all to see and to judge.
There is so much to enjoy about this book. It has great pacing, you certainly won’t be bored while reading it. And I certainly would be delighted to read more in this world. Actually, that is my one complaint, it ended, and I want to know more!
This is pretty much a flawless book, and only the lack of emotional connection with me keeps it from 5 stars.
Identity is a very fragile and ephemeral concept, and the philosophy surrounding identity fascinates me. If, in the immortal words of Ke$ha, “we R who we R”, then who we are differs depending upon whether we are alone or with people, with friends or with enemies (or, if you are Ke$ha, with frenemies). We perform identity, wearing it like a costume. But it’s not something we entirely control. Identity is not so much a costume as it is a negotation between two entities, for part of my identity is not just what I seem to be but how others see me and interact with me.
Now imagine that with a sloth clinging to your back as an external manifestation of your complicity in someone’s death, and you have Zoo City.
Lauren Beukes returns to Johannesburg, South Africa in her second novel, but it’s not the same city. Instead of a tour of a corporate-dominated near future, Beukes spins a bit of alternate history our way. Magic is real, albeit not as potent as some people might like, and it’s never more obvious but with the zoos, animalled, or—if you are feeling polite and politically correct, the aposymbiotic. People who are guilty of another person’s death—i.e., murderers—become spiritually attached to an animal. They can’t stray too far from the animal without suffering great pain. And if the animal dies, they are consumed by a cloud known as the Undertow. The animalled, or apos, are thus identified as murderers beyond the shadow of any doubt, and are treated like outcasts.
Zinzi, our intrepid narrator, has a Sloth. It could be worse—at least she doesn’t have a carnivore, which I think would be more of a burden—but a Sloth is kind of a handful to carry around at times. Beukes implies that Zinzi’s complicity is not entirely with malice, thus establishing our otherwise downtrodden and morally ambiguous protagonist as someone who is, if not righteous, capable and worthy of redemption. Zinzi struggles to earn a living using her shavi—if you get an animal, you also get a minor superpower to go with it. Zinzi can find lost things, so that’s how she makes most of her money. In her downtime, she reluctantly composes new email scams for a company to whom she owes quite a bit of money. She gets involved with some even more unsavoury characters, like you tend to do, and that’s where the story becomes interesting.
From thereon out, Zoo City becomes a spiralling descent into the dank madness of a divided city. Beukes’ economy of exposition and keen ear for dialogue and characterization are an asset here. I found this Johannesburg and this cast far more bearable and likable than Moxyland’s. I could sympathize with Zinzi’s plight and genuinely wanted her to succeed, cheering for her resourceful resilience and sighing whenever she suffered a setback. The plot is of the type that doubles back and folds up on itself several times over, which is not to say that it is too complex, but Beukes has skillfully tangled the various threads.
On the one hand, this is a missing person mystery, with Zinzi in the role of lead private investigator. It has all the hallmark archetypes prowling its pages: the shadowy kingpin who both hires Zinzi and poses her a threat; his nefarious henchmen who are Zinzi’s untrustworthy allies; the love interest, whose relationship with Zinzi is far from one-dimensional; and so on. On the other hand, Beukes explores some of the ramifications of her magic and what it means to have an animal. In particular, the book takes a very sharp turn towards the end, after the mystery part is largely resolved, and Zinzi finds herself on the run for a crime she hasn’t committed.
The twin motifs of guilt and innocence are huge here in Zoo City, for they compound that problem of identity that Zinzi and every other person with an animal feels. Nowhere does Beukes so clearly portray this as with Zinzi’s sometime-boyfriend Benoit. He has a Mongoose, and eventually we learn how he got it—the action of a terrified nineteen-year-old in genocidal Rwanda. Like Zinzi, he bears an external marker of his guilt—but does that make him a bad person? Benoit discovers his wife and children might still be alive in a refugee camp outside of South Africa, so he resolves to leave Zinzi and find them. Not only does this alter their relationship irrevoccably, it sets up an ending that is both poignant and nearly perfect.
As I mentioned earlier, Zoo City takes a sharp turn two thirds through. Just as it seems that the plot is winding down, Zinzi stumbles on to a larger game as people try to get rid of their animals (without dying themselves) in a particularly gruesome and costly manner. I’m not a fan of this transition, because it felt jarring. Beukes puts enough foreshadowing earlier in the book that this additional story element doesn’t seem entirely out of place. But I wish it had been developed more gradually instead of suddenly exploding into the foreground in the last part of the book.
Nevertheless, Beukes make up for it in the ending. I love the ending. It’s quite possibly the only way Beukes could have ended the book in a manner that is happy yet costly for Zinzi, which is exactly the balance she needed to strike. For Zinzi to escape these events completely unscathed would have been unrealistic and thematically unsatisfactory: after all, Zinzi still has to redeem herself for her actions as a scammer. Yet she is, I remain convinced, a good person who deserves that chance—and a chance is exactly what Beukes gives her. At great personal cost and with no promise of success, Zinzi sets out to fill in for someone else, just as that person made a regular habit of filling in for another.
Because it all comes back to identity. We aren’t who we think we are; we are our actions. This is the truth Beukes exposes through Zinzi’s voice and decisions. Despite all the prejudice and hardship Zinzi endures as an impoverished, animalled Black person in South Africa, she realizes that there is one thing no one else can determine about her life: what she does. Other people might judge her and construct their own versions of an identity for her, but that can never rob her of her ability to act on her own beliefs and convictions. In Zoo City, Beukes hands us a protagonist with blood on her hands and a Sloth on her back, and in so doing she tells a story about a woman who reclaims her freedom to be who she wants, not who others expect her to be.
Now imagine that with a sloth clinging to your back as an external manifestation of your complicity in someone’s death, and you have Zoo City.
Lauren Beukes returns to Johannesburg, South Africa in her second novel, but it’s not the same city. Instead of a tour of a corporate-dominated near future, Beukes spins a bit of alternate history our way. Magic is real, albeit not as potent as some people might like, and it’s never more obvious but with the zoos, animalled, or—if you are feeling polite and politically correct, the aposymbiotic. People who are guilty of another person’s death—i.e., murderers—become spiritually attached to an animal. They can’t stray too far from the animal without suffering great pain. And if the animal dies, they are consumed by a cloud known as the Undertow. The animalled, or apos, are thus identified as murderers beyond the shadow of any doubt, and are treated like outcasts.
Zinzi, our intrepid narrator, has a Sloth. It could be worse—at least she doesn’t have a carnivore, which I think would be more of a burden—but a Sloth is kind of a handful to carry around at times. Beukes implies that Zinzi’s complicity is not entirely with malice, thus establishing our otherwise downtrodden and morally ambiguous protagonist as someone who is, if not righteous, capable and worthy of redemption. Zinzi struggles to earn a living using her shavi—if you get an animal, you also get a minor superpower to go with it. Zinzi can find lost things, so that’s how she makes most of her money. In her downtime, she reluctantly composes new email scams for a company to whom she owes quite a bit of money. She gets involved with some even more unsavoury characters, like you tend to do, and that’s where the story becomes interesting.
From thereon out, Zoo City becomes a spiralling descent into the dank madness of a divided city. Beukes’ economy of exposition and keen ear for dialogue and characterization are an asset here. I found this Johannesburg and this cast far more bearable and likable than Moxyland’s. I could sympathize with Zinzi’s plight and genuinely wanted her to succeed, cheering for her resourceful resilience and sighing whenever she suffered a setback. The plot is of the type that doubles back and folds up on itself several times over, which is not to say that it is too complex, but Beukes has skillfully tangled the various threads.
On the one hand, this is a missing person mystery, with Zinzi in the role of lead private investigator. It has all the hallmark archetypes prowling its pages: the shadowy kingpin who both hires Zinzi and poses her a threat; his nefarious henchmen who are Zinzi’s untrustworthy allies; the love interest, whose relationship with Zinzi is far from one-dimensional; and so on. On the other hand, Beukes explores some of the ramifications of her magic and what it means to have an animal. In particular, the book takes a very sharp turn towards the end, after the mystery part is largely resolved, and Zinzi finds herself on the run for a crime she hasn’t committed.
The twin motifs of guilt and innocence are huge here in Zoo City, for they compound that problem of identity that Zinzi and every other person with an animal feels. Nowhere does Beukes so clearly portray this as with Zinzi’s sometime-boyfriend Benoit. He has a Mongoose, and eventually we learn how he got it—the action of a terrified nineteen-year-old in genocidal Rwanda. Like Zinzi, he bears an external marker of his guilt—but does that make him a bad person? Benoit discovers his wife and children might still be alive in a refugee camp outside of South Africa, so he resolves to leave Zinzi and find them. Not only does this alter their relationship irrevoccably, it sets up an ending that is both poignant and nearly perfect.
As I mentioned earlier, Zoo City takes a sharp turn two thirds through. Just as it seems that the plot is winding down, Zinzi stumbles on to a larger game as people try to get rid of their animals (without dying themselves) in a particularly gruesome and costly manner. I’m not a fan of this transition, because it felt jarring. Beukes puts enough foreshadowing earlier in the book that this additional story element doesn’t seem entirely out of place. But I wish it had been developed more gradually instead of suddenly exploding into the foreground in the last part of the book.
Nevertheless, Beukes make up for it in the ending. I love the ending. It’s quite possibly the only way Beukes could have ended the book in a manner that is happy yet costly for Zinzi, which is exactly the balance she needed to strike. For Zinzi to escape these events completely unscathed would have been unrealistic and thematically unsatisfactory: after all, Zinzi still has to redeem herself for her actions as a scammer. Yet she is, I remain convinced, a good person who deserves that chance—and a chance is exactly what Beukes gives her. At great personal cost and with no promise of success, Zinzi sets out to fill in for someone else, just as that person made a regular habit of filling in for another.
Because it all comes back to identity. We aren’t who we think we are; we are our actions. This is the truth Beukes exposes through Zinzi’s voice and decisions. Despite all the prejudice and hardship Zinzi endures as an impoverished, animalled Black person in South Africa, she realizes that there is one thing no one else can determine about her life: what she does. Other people might judge her and construct their own versions of an identity for her, but that can never rob her of her ability to act on her own beliefs and convictions. In Zoo City, Beukes hands us a protagonist with blood on her hands and a Sloth on her back, and in so doing she tells a story about a woman who reclaims her freedom to be who she wants, not who others expect her to be.
Distinctive sci-fi with a brilliant flair for language but a slightly wobbly plot. There were some nice touches with the use of false documentary style sections which flesh out the idea of "zoos". And the zoos certainly were an excellent idea: guilty individuals gain a spirit assigned animal, which provides a magical power but must be kept alive to avoid the guilty individual being carried away to a netherworld. Set in Johannesburg in South Africa it has a different spin to the more traditional world of sci-fi (US, Europe, Japan maybe). And if you think the zoos sound a bit like Philip Pullman, don't worry, he gets a nod in the book in a clever way and Beukes's idea expands on his in new directions.
I thought that while the plot wasn't always heading in the right direction, Beukes's writing style is full of inventive touches and carefully observed imagery and metaphor. The world, while pretty unfamiliar, is strongly realised and has the over-your-head-immersion feel of cyberpunk that I really enjoy, where too many words and ideas are new and unexplained. And the character of Zinzi steered a neat course around all the cliches that could too easily befall a strong heroine with a dark and gritty past. I could have done with more insight into Zinzi as the novel progressed, as her character wasn't as well explored as I'd have liked and I think was well enough formed that she could have stood some close examination.
The down on their luck detective plot was good (especially as I was reading The Big Sleep at the same time) and Beukes makes good use of it to explore her imaginary world. However, there were some gaping holes left open as to why Zinzi was doing this job - not so much a lack of explanation on the part of the author, as that the explanation wasn't very satisfactory.
Crime plot could have been better and would have made such a difference.
Don't get me started on the ending though. The whole book rolls along quite nicely, a tad slow at points but hardly enough to be an issue, and we work up to the big finale: bang. That's it. Whole novel wrapped up before you can even think about it. It was as if the end couple of chapters got lost and Beukes wrote a synopsis instead. Which is a crying shame, because the dramatic finale had me on the edge of my seat with its convincing adreneline fueled show down. It was such a let down to have everything wrapped up with barely a comment immediately after that. I felt cheated as a reader that I'd followed this character through, only to see them disappear into the sunset without me. Beukes just doesn't deal with the fallout that the plot climax creates.
What everyone else thought:
Opinion is generally in favour of Zoo City - particularly for breaking the mould of urban fantasy. The main character, Zinzi, is well liked and compared very favourably against urban fantasy heroines generally. The cyberpunk styling of the book put a few people off and several compared it unfavourably to Gibson (not a fair comparison in my mind). Overall, sf and fantasy fans love this book for its fresh vision of the genre, others are finding it a bit too niche.
Read this book if you want a quick, fresh version of urban fantasy that will keep you entertained.
I thought that while the plot wasn't always heading in the right direction, Beukes's writing style is full of inventive touches and carefully observed imagery and metaphor. The world, while pretty unfamiliar, is strongly realised and has the over-your-head-immersion feel of cyberpunk that I really enjoy, where too many words and ideas are new and unexplained. And the character of Zinzi steered a neat course around all the cliches that could too easily befall a strong heroine with a dark and gritty past. I could have done with more insight into Zinzi as the novel progressed, as her character wasn't as well explored as I'd have liked and I think was well enough formed that she could have stood some close examination.
The down on their luck detective plot was good (especially as I was reading The Big Sleep at the same time) and Beukes makes good use of it to explore her imaginary world. However, there were some gaping holes left open as to why Zinzi was doing this job - not so much a lack of explanation on the part of the author, as that the explanation wasn't very satisfactory.
Crime plot could have been better and would have made such a difference.
Don't get me started on the ending though. The whole book rolls along quite nicely, a tad slow at points but hardly enough to be an issue, and we work up to the big finale: bang. That's it. Whole novel wrapped up before you can even think about it. It was as if the end couple of chapters got lost and Beukes wrote a synopsis instead. Which is a crying shame, because the dramatic finale had me on the edge of my seat with its convincing adreneline fueled show down. It was such a let down to have everything wrapped up with barely a comment immediately after that. I felt cheated as a reader that I'd followed this character through, only to see them disappear into the sunset without me. Beukes just doesn't deal with the fallout that the plot climax creates.
What everyone else thought:
Opinion is generally in favour of Zoo City - particularly for breaking the mould of urban fantasy. The main character, Zinzi, is well liked and compared very favourably against urban fantasy heroines generally. The cyberpunk styling of the book put a few people off and several compared it unfavourably to Gibson (not a fair comparison in my mind). Overall, sf and fantasy fans love this book for its fresh vision of the genre, others are finding it a bit too niche.
Read this book if you want a quick, fresh version of urban fantasy that will keep you entertained.
Zoo City - this is the place where the animalled live - these are people who have been linked to an animal of some sort because of a crime committed in the past.
Zinzi December is linked to a sloth. She has a knack for finding lost objects and is currently running an spam email service in a vain attempt to clear her debts. She normally avoids looking for people as it is too much hassle, but when offered the chance to look for one half of a pop duo she accepts.
As she closes in on her quarry, she unwittingly uncovers a series of murders, and has closer brushes with the law and the criminal underworld.
Wasn't sure about this first, the animal links are weird to say the least, but Beukes has created a unique urban fantasy novel, with this new Johannesburg as an edgy, wired place. The plot twists and picks up the pace nicely and the last part of the book zips by.
Zinzi December is linked to a sloth. She has a knack for finding lost objects and is currently running an spam email service in a vain attempt to clear her debts. She normally avoids looking for people as it is too much hassle, but when offered the chance to look for one half of a pop duo she accepts.
As she closes in on her quarry, she unwittingly uncovers a series of murders, and has closer brushes with the law and the criminal underworld.
Wasn't sure about this first, the animal links are weird to say the least, but Beukes has created a unique urban fantasy novel, with this new Johannesburg as an edgy, wired place. The plot twists and picks up the pace nicely and the last part of the book zips by.
This book has picked up a number of award nominations and wins, so I thought I'd check it out as I'm always looking for something good and a little different in the science fiction world.
'Zoo City' is set in a future alternate South Africa, one where a significant chunk of the population have suffered from a particular ailment - essentially, the commiting of a crime leads to an animal becoming attached to you and the loss of that animal is a Very Bad Thing indeed. On the flipside, the posession of that animal is also accompanied by some kind of psychic gift. As a visual representation of someone's past behaviour or failings, the existence of an animal by your side points you out as someone different, with the resultant discrimination.
Our protagonist, Zinzi, is one such - she has a Sloth as a companion and makes her living by being involved in 419 scams and exercising her psychic gift for finding things. In 'Zoo City' Zinzi gets dragged into the search for the missing half of a teeange pop sensation and discovers much more sinister things going on beneath the world she thought she already knew everything about.
It's a clever read, with Zinzi (and Sloth) being well-written and rounded characters; by the end of the book, you feel like Zinzi is starting to realise just what her previous actions have done to others, for the first time since she got Sloth and became very focussed on her own survival. Unfortunately, the author didn't seem to have figured out how she wanted to end the book and it pretty much just stops with the written equivalent of fade-to-black, which is disappointing. Still, I'll be keeping an eye out for future novels by this writer, as I'm interested to see how she follows up on something that was so critically lauded...
'Zoo City' is set in a future alternate South Africa, one where a significant chunk of the population have suffered from a particular ailment - essentially, the commiting of a crime leads to an animal becoming attached to you and the loss of that animal is a Very Bad Thing indeed. On the flipside, the posession of that animal is also accompanied by some kind of psychic gift. As a visual representation of someone's past behaviour or failings, the existence of an animal by your side points you out as someone different, with the resultant discrimination.
Our protagonist, Zinzi, is one such - she has a Sloth as a companion and makes her living by being involved in 419 scams and exercising her psychic gift for finding things. In 'Zoo City' Zinzi gets dragged into the search for the missing half of a teeange pop sensation and discovers much more sinister things going on beneath the world she thought she already knew everything about.
It's a clever read, with Zinzi (and Sloth) being well-written and rounded characters; by the end of the book, you feel like Zinzi is starting to realise just what her previous actions have done to others, for the first time since she got Sloth and became very focussed on her own survival. Unfortunately, the author didn't seem to have figured out how she wanted to end the book and it pretty much just stops with the written equivalent of fade-to-black, which is disappointing. Still, I'll be keeping an eye out for future novels by this writer, as I'm interested to see how she follows up on something that was so critically lauded...