A compelling noir/fantasy mash-up, in which the lively but corrupt and decaying city is Johannesburg, South Africa, and the cynical detective is Zinzi December, ex-journalist, ex-convict, with the mark of her dark past literally clinging to her back in the form of a sloth.

Zinzi is one of the animalled, people whose crimes/sins/guilt/next reincarnation/take your pick of theory manifests as a companion animal, empathic but silent, which cannot be separated from them and whose death will suck its human into the Undertow, a deadly shadow which, like the animals themselves, is a great mystery.

The animalled also get some sort of psychic/magical talent. Zinzi's is finding stuff... or people. But, because you don't become animalled unless you've caused someone's death, the animalled are treated with suspicion and disdain, have a hard time getting jobs, and mostly end up in some sort of ghetto where honest work is hard to come by.

Zinzi supplements her finding income by running 419 scams (aka Spanish Prisoner, aka Nigerian spam), and a big part of the story is watching her try to dig herself out of the moral, financial, and emotional hole she's in. She's not always likable, but she and Sloth are definitely interesting.

I love companion animals, I love noir, I love books with strong narrative voices, I love books with well-written snappy dialogue, I love clever interstitial material likes excerpts from magazines and so forth (the hilarious nod to The Golden Compass!), and I love well-drawn depictions of cities, so this novel, which features all those things, was right up my alley.

The second half isn't as strong as the first, and the climax takes the book from noir-dark to somewhat ridiculously grimdark, though the ending is good and not, as I was beginning to worry, rocks fall, everybody dies. I also was much more interested in the Undertow and the animals than in the mystery plot, but the mystery plot takes over the second half of the book. Still, this is a very strong, unusual, interesting novel.

I read a sample of this on Kindle and liked it enough to instantly buy the rest. However, the Kindle version has enough formatting problems that I would recommend getting the hard copy instead. (I assume the hard copy doesn't replicate all the broken lines, etc, that plague the Kindle edition.)

Zoo City

Spoilers lurk below!



Did anyone understand what went down with Zinzi and her dead brother? Did she literally kill him (why?), or did she just feel responsible for his death?

I didn't want any sort of neat, reductionist explanation of the animals and the Undertow, but I did want more details than we got. Like, do all people who kill people gets animals, or just some? Does it have to be murder? Or do you just have to feel guilty, regardless of whether or not you objectively are? Can trauma alone, without a death, create an animal?

From: [personal profile] boundbooks


I just finished The Demon's Daughter, and I wanted to thank you for your earlier rec. It was FANTASTIC.

I also found myself agreeing with this line for your review: "Unlike a lot of literature which was clearly hot at the time but not to modern readers’ erotic tastes… this is still hot."

There were definitely moments in the text which were all 'Is it hot in this room, or is it just me?'

Thank you for recing it, I doubt I would ever have had the pleasure of finding and reading it otherwise!

From: [personal profile] boundbooks


I think I shall have to schedule a review, it's really a gem of a story!
sumofparts: person holding a cloud in a field (Default)

From: [personal profile] sumofparts


Thanks for the rec! I'm putting this on my to-read list.

From: [identity profile] spectralbovine.livejournal.com


*adds yet another book to the ever-growing List*

I wonder when I'll ever find the time to READ all these books you've recommended!

From: [identity profile] tool-of-satan.livejournal.com


It's a problem. This is why I keep sending Rachel books I have already read.[*] Admittedly this doesn't cut down YOUR list any, but who's more important here, you or me?

[*]This is not actually why I do that.

From: [identity profile] jinian.livejournal.com

I just read this too!


I think Zinzi sold her brother to a gang somehow, and I don't think she thought he'd really be killed, but both of those ideas are only shakily supported by the text.

No one really seemed to know what created the animals, though of course lots of people were sure they really did know. Some of the people who had them were looking pretty sociopathic, so I don't think guilt is necessary. Might be sufficient, though. Hmm, another interpretation of Zinzi's guilt about her brother would be that the Sloth showed up due to trauma so she assumed she must be the cause of his death. I don't think anything contraindicates that idea; her parents didn't get animals, but not everyone gets PTSD from the same stimuli.

From: [identity profile] rachelmanija.livejournal.com

Re: I just read this too!


I feel like while the animals and Undertow are mysterious to the characters and so can remain mysterious to the readers, Zinzi knows perfectly well what went down with her brother, so the reader should, eventually, know too. It's key to her character and the whole story, too.

I wanted some sort of revelation about the animals that we never got. Not something too over-explanatory, but SOMETHING. Like, even something like Zinzi realizing that they can be manifestations of self-inflicted guilt rather than objective sin, or some such personal revelation. (I liked that everyone had different ideas.)


From: [identity profile] spectralbovine.livejournal.com

Re: I just read this too!


So, I think, the very first question Lauren Beukes got at the reading I went to was what happened with her brother, and she explained.

Zinzi needed money, so she staged a fake hijacking (presumably intending to collect on the insurance or something), but her brother, the white knight, tried to stop it and got killed in the process. Knowing that story before I read the book, I could see how the little clues were painting that picture, but I don't know that I would have put it all together with just the text. Ah, here it is, during the session with the sangoma:

An email. Year, make, and model number. License and registration. Time and address. I don't feel guilty. Insurance will pay out for the car. I'll be settled with my dealer. Hijackings happen every day. I don't count on the white knight.

That actually sounds pretty goddamn explicit to me. But it takes a lot of reading between the lines if that's all you're going on, and you come in with the assumption that Zinzi literally killed her brother somehow.

From: [identity profile] rachelmanija.livejournal.com

Re: I just read this too!


Ah-ha, that makes sense. But I think it was clear to Beukes, but not so much to the reader. All I really figured out was that she had been involved in a crime which had somehow (I didn't understand how) got her brother killed (I didn't understand how that happened, either.)

From: [identity profile] spectralbovine.livejournal.com


I knew you had reviewed this! It sounded familiar. Lauren Beukes is coming to Borderlands in a few weeks, and the newsletter emphasized that she's from South Africa and doesn't visit the U.S. often, so I was thinking of going. The book does sound like someone I would enjoy. It is just a stand-alone, right? Not the beginning of a series?

From: [identity profile] spectralbovine.livejournal.com


(I assume the hard copy doesn't replicate all the broken lines, etc, that plague the Kindle edition.)
Actually, it does! I don't know what's up with that.
.

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