(no subject)

[skygiants]

It's actually kind of weird to go from talking about Otherland to talking about Zoo City, because the books actually have a surprising amount in common:

1. They probably both feature about 400 pages that take place in South Africa! It's just that in Zoo City this is the whole book and in Otherland this is only a small percentage of the THOUSANDS OF PAGES OF TEXT.
2. They both feature black South African heroines who work with computers, who are racked by guilt over something terrible that happened to her brother, and who have animal companions who usually shows better judgment than they do. It's just that a.) in Otherland the heroine is an engineering instructor and in Zoo City the heroine writes scam emails, and b.) in Zoo City the animal companion is one of the supernatural soul-bonded animal that you get in this universe when you commit a terrible crime, and in Otherland the animal companion is actually the heroine's love interest trapped in the shape of a baboon.
3. They both use the device of including snippets of in-universe news clips and journal articles and research studies and so on to build out the world beyond the immediate plot, which ... actually I have nothing sarcastic to say here, I love this device and I think it is used well in both cases.
4. They both include plotlines about a set of twin teenaged pop sensations looking to explore future musical careers separate from the other! YES, OTHERLAND HAS THAT TOO. Way, way in the background, but still, it weirded me out.
5. Both of them include REALLY HORRIBLE AND GROSS RITUALIZED MURDERS.

...uh, obviously though in other ways they are very different....

I mean, I think the other most relevant thing to say about Zoo City is that it is very, very noir. In addition to her job as a scam email writer, the heroine is a private eye with a dark past trying to go clean; her employer is a sinister millionaire; the teen pop idol that she's been hired to track down might be an innocent victim or might be a femme fatale; the city of Johannesburg is corrupt and untrustworthy and full of secrets and shadows. It's also a supernatural world in which various people come with soulbonded animals and/or low-key superpowers. I liked the worldbuilding, a lot. I also generally like noir, and I appreciated how much Zoo City full-on embraced noirland, but, like ... be braced for the horrible and gross ritualized murders ... and also for the noir attitude that all victories are hollow, all your effort is eventually futile, and success in a corrupt system is one hundred percent un-possible ...

Comments

[nny]

I got in a conversation with Lauren Beukes over twitter right after I read this, because I was like OMG I LOVE THIS BOOK BECAUSE I WANTED A SLOTH DAEMON THAT I WOULD CARRY LIKE A BACKPACK and then she was like OMG THAT IS WHY I WROTE IT

XD

Then she challenged me to write the Philip Pullman essay mentioned in the book, and then I ran away in terror. But I totally wanna.

[hebethen]

It is so noir. By the time I got to the gross horrible ritualized murders I was a bit ???!

[skygiants]

WHO DOESN'T WANT A SLOTH DAEMON TO CARRY LIKE A BACKPACK THOUGH

You should write that essay! You should 100% write that essay, it would be AMAZING.

[skygiants]

I was not expecting the gross horrible ritualized murders to be quite THAT horrible! Probably I should have been...

[happydork]

I loved Zoo City! Such a good book, yay!

I suspect you will have already been warned/picked this up, but just in case: Really, really don't read Shining Girls. I didn't even notice the grossness of the murders in Zoo City, and I couldn't make it through Shining Girls without advice from friends on which chapters to skip. (Here is a thread in which I angrily anti-rec it.)

[happydork]

You totally should! :)

[damselfish]

Wow I appreciate that a lot, because I've been hearing so much about Shining Girls that I was considering reading it with a sort of weary "yeah yeah, dead women, the beige wallpaper of storytelling, you won't even notice...."

I have to wonder about the bit where the author was like "if only I could have written more about the women" and the question "why didn't you?" The cynic in my says "because it wouldn't be a breakout debut novel, duh." I really wonder if it would have.

[happydork]

:) Very happy to help -- I wish someone had warned me, because the trouble with Zoo City was I liked it so much that I was willing to trust Beukes through the first half of The Shining Girls before the NOPE overwhelmed me.

[skygiants]

Ah ha ha ha yeah. I had seen vague descriptions of this type floating around, and was sort of like 'yeeeeah this does not seem like something I particularly want to invest in now.' 'Now' I suspect will probably end up being 'ever.' The fact that she didn't successfully save ANYBODY at the end of Zoo City was hard enough for me, and I was braced for grimdarknoir!

[genarti]

I can't decide if I want to read this book because of all the cool things about it, or if I want to postpone reading it indefinitely because of noirland ALL VICTORIES ARE HOLLOW NO HAPPY ENDINGS FOR ANYONE EXCEPT MAYBE THE VILLAINS, but... but all the cool stuff! SLOTH DAEMON THING.

[rachelmanija]

I wrote fanfic for this book that was solely interstitial material!

http://archiveofourown.org/works/293529

I liked big chunks of it, but it tipped over into too grimdark for me by the end. The terrible fate of her buddy was what did it for me.

[skygiants]

You would love the worldbuilding! I suspect the plot would indeed leave you cold and hollow.

On the plus side, no happy endings for the villains either!

[skygiants]

For me it was the fact that she did all that work and neither of the kids survived, not even a little! WHAT WAS EVEN THE POINT.

[genarti]

Cold and hollow... LIKE THE HEART OF [APPROPRIATE CHARACTER(S)].

*guesses*

That is at least some consolation, though, yes!

[rachelmanija]

The point is that EVERYTHING SUCKS and TRYING IS USELESS.

[skygiants]

~*~*~NOIIIIIIIR~*~*~*~ *jazzhands*

[lacewood]

I have this book because I've heard cool things about it. And hey, urban fantasy set in South Africa! But I read the first 2 chapters sometime last year and am still kind of working up the mental stamina to read the rest because I could tell SO MANY BAD THINGS WERE GOING TO HAPPEN.

Maybe if I read something really fluffy before it and then queued up something really fluffy AFTER...? orz Or maybe that would just make the mood whiplash worse ahaha.

[skygiants]

YOUR INTUITION WAS NOT WRONG. I would definitely pregame and postgame with, like, Georgette Heyer or something. Or just a lot of pictures of cute sloths!

[rmc28]

Thank you for the review, because I had not picked up in all the "cool urban fantasy, breakout new novel" gushing that it was noir and dark and horrible. I can't really cope with the noir attitude and have to be in a good place before I read it or I just end up miserable for days.