William Gibson turned me on to Lauren Beukes and while I enjoyed her first book Moxyland, the magical premise of Zoo City made me a wonder if it would be my kind of thing. Ms. Beukes dispelled all my doubts with the oldest magic in the book, good story telling. She drew me into a strange, wonderful, believable world where I totally cared yet couldn't imagine what would happen next.
Zoo City looks at a world filled with prejudices and multi-layered economies of fame, attention, media, drugs & greed. It's a world that is a more pitch perfect echo of our own than you'll find in most other novels but Zoo City is a very special beast of a book. The "animaled" in this world are humans bonded to a creature because of a past sin and their eventual doom and demise is a certain undertow. But with the creature comes a talent and with Zinzi December's Sloth came a talent for finding lost objects...
The dialog is dark and witty, the action barely pauses to let the reader catch a breath and I found myself clinging, sloth-like to every move Zinzi made through the dark streets, sewers and schemes that form Zoo City.
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