Zoo City

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. show more 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 show less

Great urban fantasy in a vivid world I want to see more of. It’s exciting, funny, and suspenseful in pretty much equal measure, and gritty without being so grimy I’m turned off. I loved the combination of South Africa and magic and real-world troubles, and the mystery, which could’ve been a pretty standard missing-persons case, ended up being very fresh and different. I also really liked that Beukes drops in-world media between some of the chapters, to really flesh the world out. Zinzi herself is wonderful—smart, snarky, stubborn, and about everything you could want in a protagonist. I wish there was a sequel.

7/10

Lauren Beukes is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. In this sort of fantasy, Kinzi December, recovering addict, is part of the underclass in South Africa, getting by by finding lost things for clients and running email scams for the lowlife she owes a lot of money. She's also living with the stigma of being animalled, a fascinating concept that that threads through the novel and gives it a lot of its specialness. In Kinzi's case, the animal she's been bonded with is a sloth, and I must admit, I grew quite fond of Sloth over the course of the book.

Kinzi's desperate financial situation leads her to take a missing person's case, and that's when things go from bad to worse. Tasked by a sleazy music mogul to find the missing show more teenaged girl half of a hot duo (the other half is her twin brother), Kinzi is drawn deeper and deeper into a weird conspiracy, complicated by the furry conscience she must carry around on her back. To say more would give too much away.

Beukes' prose brings this world to life and Kinzi is a strong, flawed protagonist with a lot of heart who sometimes is her own worst enemy. I'd love to read a sequel. show less

Devoured this book over a single day-- being sick and on bed rest is good for something, right?

It was good company; I was intrigued, kept intrigued, at how things panned out. I really enjoyed the layers of detail, but I think we could have had some places where this got tightened. A second reading while less drugged might reveal more that I missed. But even while in my medicated state, I got a lot out of this book.

I'm hoping for another one in this world; maybe not about Zinzi herself (though I found her engaging, don't get me wrong, but I think her story is told - though I would have liked to have known more, had a clearer picture of the wrongs she's done beyond the obvious) but certainly about the world and the animals and it's show more strange magical systems.

The worldbuilding, magical realism layered atop a more cyberpunk thriller reminds me of the old gaming system for Shadowrun (and I would suggest this book to anyone who has played that particular game). Not 100% original, but great writers steal, not borrow! I think that the flavors she sets in with this are good, gritty and ugly and in places, hopeful. It's not your average urban fantasy, which is good, because I've got my staples for that already. This was cyberfantasy, or post-cyberpunk-fantasy, daring to touch on scenes that the average wizard/vampire/werewolf/faerie detective book won't touch. I love it for that.

Either way: an engaging, if quick read. I'll definitely be looking for Moxyland by the same author. show less

A dark urban fantasy set in Johannesburg provides the setting for a missing persons case. For those that have got past that first sentence which only gives the tiniest of brief outlines that this book contains I'll add a bit more detail. Zinzi December has to carry around a Sloth everywhere she goes. Her companion gives her two things: A gift, in Zinzi's case this is the ability to find lost things, and also protection from the Undertow, a blackness that would literally swallow her up in a very unpleasant way. The downside to being animalled is that to get one you must have committed a murderous act. Zinzi also has to pay off huge debts that she ran up from her junkie days and to pay them off she is working for a 419 scammer sending out show more those e-mails that look so enticing but which first require you to pay a small fee in order to get your hands on a fortune. In the meantime, Zinzi also uses her gift to find those small things that everyone is always losing but when her latest client is murdered just prior to pay-day then she must take on a job that she never likes doing, find a missing person. In this case it's the female half of twins who are the latest music sensation who's disappeared just prior to finishing off their latest album and their producer hires Zinzi to locate her.

The story gives a fresh spin on an old tale with finely rendered locales and fully fleshed out characters which make reading this book an absolute pleasure even though the themes are on the seedier side of life. Throughout the story there are also articles detailing some of the themes of the book as well as faux reviews and extracts from books which add to the detail for the reader and don't interfere with the flow of the narrative at all. It's all very well done. Lauren Beukes will definitely be an author I look out for in future. show less

I almost abandoned this book because the first 2/3 of the novel is a rather mundane "girl private eye" story, that is if you can get past the fact that she is a criminal and former addict, and that people who commit crimes in that world end up with an animal symbiont and some small magic. None of that really added to the narrative, and the only thing that kept me going was the clever writing and the South African setting: languages, immigration trouble and all. The last third, or Book 2, sped up like a centrifuge and everything made sense and there was horror, some harm to animals (although not graphic) and harm to people (graphic) and the novel really did not end in a predictable way. That's how even though I was on the fence for the show more first part, I ended up liking it. show less

A wonderfully unique and inventive science fiction in a setting often neglected in the genre, Zoo City is a hard-hitting and humanistic thriller. Everybody has made mistakes, and having the ability to pretend you haven't stripped away from you would be devastating. Zinzi is a realistic (though maybe not relatable) protagonist - scarred and angry and bitter but also trying to move on and make a new life. Though we never find out what exactly caused Sloth to attach to her, we get enough hints and enough of a sense of her guilt to build a picture. All the supporting characters were great and believably sleazy (The Marabou and the Maltese in particular were great "villains" and had a clear sense of purpose throughout), and the true-to-life show more fast-paced and shocking end was both unpredictable and fitting. show less