Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
Jan. 27th, 2016 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroMost of the time, getting an animal companion and a superpower seems like a good thing. Not here—in this world, you become a “zoo” as a result of committing some sort of crime (apparently typically murder) and then are lucky if you end up with second-class citizen status. This is the story of a South African ex-addict scam artist named Zinzi December, as she tries to keep her life together and also track down a missing pop star.
My discussion will spoil the book like crazy.
The world-building is interesting in that this is the kind of spec-fic that doesn’t even try to have a satisfactory “science” explanation—the scientific notes on zoos that intersperse the chapters are so much wanking and gobbledygook (clearly intentionally) because zoos are magic and get magic powers. Plenty of theories are floated (it feels pretty realistic, actually), but no actual explanation of Animals or the Undertow is proffered, and I suspect that the author neither had nor needed one in mind.
One suspects that their needs to be an intelligence behind them, though, whether that’s external or the person’s subconscious. The animals fit people’s personalities/natures too well for them to be random; and “crime” and “guilt” are extremely subjective things. Zinzi didn’t actively kill her brother, but her role in his death was enough to get her a Sloth—which implies it’s her guilt that does the job. Does every soldier in this world automatically become a zoo? Do strike drone operators? Generals who give killing orders? Does it have to be murder, or do rapists and torturers become zoos, too? I suspect you need to hit what the New World of Darkness books call a “personal breaking point”; as long as you feel sufficiently justified in your actions, you don’t get an Animal.
Which would also explain why zoos seem to all be some degree of self-destructive: Deep down, every one of them feels they deserve what they got. (There’s probably a wonderful story of how the introduction of Animals was supposed to be this great evolution of the human psychic gestalt, but because we’re all assholes, it manifested only as the embodiment of guilt and everyone else actively rejects them because of that.)
A conversation just after I finished this book:
Jethrien: Oh, I read that years ago. I don’t really remember the ending, though.
Me: The dirigible is in flames, everybody’s dead and I’ve lost my hat.
Jethrien: Yeah, it’s noir. Nothing ends well in noir.
(But seriously: Zinzi is deeply in debt, on the hook for four murders, injured, and forced to flee the country. Everybody we met who wasn’t a total scumbag is dead or comatose. Odi got et, but the two real villains get away clean. If this was a video game, I’d restart and collect all the secret gems so I could get the non-sucky ending.)
Overall: It’s dark. Whoa nelly, is it dark. The world-building is clever and the social politics are well done, but this is not a happy book and things do not go well for anybody. I’ve read John Constantine stories with happier endings.
My discussion will spoil the book like crazy.
The world-building is interesting in that this is the kind of spec-fic that doesn’t even try to have a satisfactory “science” explanation—the scientific notes on zoos that intersperse the chapters are so much wanking and gobbledygook (clearly intentionally) because zoos are magic and get magic powers. Plenty of theories are floated (it feels pretty realistic, actually), but no actual explanation of Animals or the Undertow is proffered, and I suspect that the author neither had nor needed one in mind.
One suspects that their needs to be an intelligence behind them, though, whether that’s external or the person’s subconscious. The animals fit people’s personalities/natures too well for them to be random; and “crime” and “guilt” are extremely subjective things. Zinzi didn’t actively kill her brother, but her role in his death was enough to get her a Sloth—which implies it’s her guilt that does the job. Does every soldier in this world automatically become a zoo? Do strike drone operators? Generals who give killing orders? Does it have to be murder, or do rapists and torturers become zoos, too? I suspect you need to hit what the New World of Darkness books call a “personal breaking point”; as long as you feel sufficiently justified in your actions, you don’t get an Animal.
Which would also explain why zoos seem to all be some degree of self-destructive: Deep down, every one of them feels they deserve what they got. (There’s probably a wonderful story of how the introduction of Animals was supposed to be this great evolution of the human psychic gestalt, but because we’re all assholes, it manifested only as the embodiment of guilt and everyone else actively rejects them because of that.)
A conversation just after I finished this book:
Jethrien: Oh, I read that years ago. I don’t really remember the ending, though.
Me: The dirigible is in flames, everybody’s dead and I’ve lost my hat.
Jethrien: Yeah, it’s noir. Nothing ends well in noir.
(But seriously: Zinzi is deeply in debt, on the hook for four murders, injured, and forced to flee the country. Everybody we met who wasn’t a total scumbag is dead or comatose. Odi got et, but the two real villains get away clean. If this was a video game, I’d restart and collect all the secret gems so I could get the non-sucky ending.)
Overall: It’s dark. Whoa nelly, is it dark. The world-building is clever and the social politics are well done, but this is not a happy book and things do not go well for anybody. I’ve read John Constantine stories with happier endings.
