Beukes, Lauren: Zoo City
Zoo City (2010)
Written by: Lauren Beukes
Genre: Urban/Dark Fantasy
Pages: 416 (Kindle)
Why I Read It: Lauren Beukes's name seems to be the next big thing when it comes to science fiction and fantasy, and many of you praised her Zoo City to the hills. While I didn't fall in love with her debut, Moxyland, she showed enough spunk and promise that I had to give her follow-up a shot. It didn't win the June Book Club selection either (losing only by three votes), which meant I could devour it immediately, so devour I did.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: WHERE NO ONE ELSE DARE VENTURE . . .
Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty online 419 scam habit - and a talent for finding lost things. But when her latest client, a little old lady, turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, she’s forced to take on her least favorite kind of job: missing persons.
An astonishing second novel from the author of the highly-acclaimed Moxyland.
FILE UNDER: Modern Fantasy [Black Magic Noir / Pale Crocodile / Spirit Guardians / Lost Stars]
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Nay. I end up quoting a lot from the book, but only because I liked the phrasing and descriptions so much. I also talk about why the world-building works and why the main plot didn't interest me as much as everything else.
The language grabbed me immediately, and the premise -- such a darker version of Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, was just too good to ignore. I was merrily reading the sample and enjoying myself when I realized there was no way that I wouldn't read this book, so why keep reading? The animals combined with the magical ability, the reason why some people are animalled, it's just too great. I had to experience this world for myself.
Let's look at some of the sentences that tickled my fancy:
Morning light the sulphur colour of the mine dumps seeps across Johannesburg's skiline and sears through my window. My own personal bat signal.
But I'll be honest, I have a problem with the first sentence, and it's not just the UK spellings of the word sulfur and color. It's the fact that it's too easy to read "dumps" as a verb instead of a noun. So when I'm trying to read dumps as a verb, I get seeps right after it, and it drives me bonkers. Not great for the first sentence, but Beaukes makes up for it with the bat signal!
What else delighted my reader's eye?
The Mongoose in question is culred up like a furry comma on my laptop, the glow of the LED throbbing under his nose. Like he doesn't know that my computer is out of bounds. [When Zinzi tries to remove said Mongoose, he does the following] Hunching his stripy shoulders, he hisses at me, teeth bared. I hiss back. The Mongoose realises he has urgent flea bites to attend to.
I think I love these sections because they tell me so much about the heroine in such a quick bit of time. I like this lady. Her humor jives with mine, you know?
Another thing that snagged my interest was how the book immediately felt like a darker, adult version of Pullman's His Dark Materials. Even better was when later, the book itself acknowledges Pullman's fiction, which I thought was an excellent nod.
And who can't love Sloth?
I smile in spite of myself. But when [Benoît] moves to kiss me, Sloth bats him away with a proprietary arm.
Some more quotes, because when I first started reading, I was happy as a clam with some of Beukes' phrasing.
Her thinning orange hair was gelled into a hard pompadour, like the crust on crème brûlée.
And this is a great description that should make you want to gag:
The tea tasted like stale horse piss drained through a homeless guy's sock.
Anyone with migraines can, unfortunately, relate to this next sentence all too well.
I'm still a couple of kays from Mrs Luditsky's block, just turning off Oxford and away from the heavy traffic, which is giving me a headache, the kind that borrows in behind your temples like a brain termite.
I think I'm gonna start calling my headaches "brain termites" in the future. It just has such a wonderful ring to it!
Also, Zinzi's method of counting alligators when she's trying to be patient or calm? I loved it.
Here's the thing, though: I keep salivating over the beginning, right? But as the book went forward, I was less entertained by the prose, and I was less entertained by the story that unfolded. What started out with sharp wit and descriptions was coupled with Zinzi's job, her ability to find lost objects and all that entails. That's the story I wanted to read about, but once we got to the whole missing persons case and Zinzi picked up her journalistic roots, my attention wasn't as focused and I wasn't as entertained.
Don't get me wrong: i was fascinated by the world itself, how people came to be animalled and all that entailed and all it could mean. I was absolutely, totally fascinated, and I wanted more. But that took a backseat to the detective story that unfolded, and that made me sad. I wanted it to be more in the forefront, and it wasn't, and that's just my problem to deal with, right?
But the timeline of Zinzi's past confused me. When she hooks back up with Gio for a favor, I got the impression he'd never met Sloth before, but then when he writes that trash story, it sounds like he does have experience (which, since we know he's lying, maybe he was lying about the time too, but the point is, I should be able to pick the truth from the lies, and I can't). I'm also confused as to when Zinzi got Sloth -- how old was she? And how exactly did she kill her brother? At first I thought it was somehow gang-related, but then there's a fragment of memory that makes me wonder if her brother was sexually abusing her and she'd had enough. I honestly don't know. Maybe I read too fast and the answers are there, but honestly, I don't think Beukes gives us enough to have a solid answer, and I resent that a bit.
And I just wasn't interested in the main plot line at all. That's not to say it was a bad read, because it was a good read in terms of pace and voice and world-building, but the main plot left something to be desired, and I just didn't care what happened to the twins and what it meant that people could get rid of their animals. However, what leads up to that is sufficiently gruesome, and I do love the crocodile's reaction after he's bonded with the boy but realizes the boy is dead. Rather touching, especially considering a crocodile isn't a cute, cuddly creature. Also, I felt that the two henchmen were too arbitrary. Their storyline really isn't wrapped up in a satisfying way, and what we do end up with makes me feel like Zinzi's involement was almost pointless.
I'm sorry, I can't stop quoting:
Obviously, he had something horrible in his past, viz the Mongoose, but he wore it well, like a soft old shirt that's been washed many times.
And to close the review, let's end with this, shall we?
I danced until my feet broke off. Until my shoes turned red with blood. I always wanted to be a girl in a storybook.
My Rating: Good Read
This is the kind of book that was quite readable with a narrative voice that really grabbed my attention. I liked Zinzi as a heroine. She was flawed but funny, and I could really understand her conflicting desires to get away from her past and to simply immerse herself in it, despite how the past wasn't healthy for her. What really shines is the world of the animalled, the situations that bring these animals to bind with humans, and what it means to live with a monkey on your back, quite literally. The allusions to Philip Pullman have me wanting to re-read The Golden Compass so I can finish the trilogy, just so I can compare what Pullman's doing with his animals to what Beukes is doing with hers. While I personally didn't care about what ended up being the main plot, there's enough in this book that had me fascinated, and Beukes is definitely a promising writer to keep an eye on. I just wish that when Angry Robot published her books in the U.S., that they'd convert the spellings. Is that bad?
Special Note: The Kindle edition is rife with typos, and I mean rife (and I'm not talking about UK spellings either!). Separate words bleed together to make one long confusing one, line breaks happen at odd and unnecessary places. I didn't have this problem when I read my sample of this book, but to be fair, I didn't finish the sample and the problem shows up more and more in the middle and end anyway. So despite the $4.69 price tag, the Kindle version isn't worth the distraction or headache in this case. I mean, let's be real: if I'm going to get a serious discount on the e-book, I want the discount to be because I don't have the physical book in my hands, not because I'm getting a shitty proofreading job. So if you're interested in this book, pass on the Kindle copy and get yourself the mass market. It's very nice looking, and I really wish I'd gotten it instead. Especially when I checked passages that I knew had typos/bad line breaks and discovered the mass market version was proofread just fine . . .
Cover Commentary: Delightfully colorful and quite eye-catching. I love that we've got a heroine whose skin color is portrayed properly, let alone the other details, like the scarf she wears! The other characters are portrayed excellently as well, and the added touch of showing us each of their animals is excellent. This is a color that well represents the book, and that pleases me. :)
Next up: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson