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dancing_moonI finished Zoo City by Lauren Beukes today, and both began and finished Janet Evanovich's Smokin' Seventeen, the latest Stephanie Plum novel.
My impressions:
I was curious about Beukes writing when I saw her debut novel, Moxyland, in the store, because a near-future sf about teen kids and computers written by someone not from the US or the England interests me. However, I read some less than positive reviews and decided to hold off for a while. Zoo City otoh won a bunch of prices and had an even more interesting blurb, so I bought it in preparation for our vacation in Spain.
Then I managed to forget it on the floor in my apartment...
But, finally having gotten round to reading it, I can recommend it. It's not a super-duper good book, but it's got a fresh setting, a good (if dark!) plot and her writing is snappy. What lacks is mostly character depth, as in many other thrillers.
The world where Zoo City takes place is half a step removed from ours, and it is very much like Pullman's His Dark Materials gone wrong. Here, only certain people have spirit animals, and they're not well seen. Because when you're a zoo, it means you've killed someone - if it's your guilt, bad karma or a psychic disharmonic in the universe is unknown, but the animalled people are shunted off, hunted and looked at with disgust. That the animal also means you get gifted with some variant of magical gift doesn't make the prejudice any better.
After reading a whole slew of fandom-of-choice/HDM crossovers with precious talking animals, the one cuter than the other, this was a total breath of fresh air, lemme tell you.
Zinzi is the main character and after she got her Sloth, she hankers herself through life by working as an e-mail scammer and a finder of lost things. Easy, since her magic allows her to find the connections between people and what they have lost.
The plot kicks off when she's wrangled into finding a run-away teenage popstar and discovers a whole slew of dirty business. Sensitive readers should beware: The story is violent and contains some really squicky scenes, but I liked that it's not just the cool, slick noir violence which is common in many thrillers.
Oh, for crying out loud, Evanovich, get your girl to pick a man. The Stephanie Plum novels are like reading long, self-indulgent fic about your favorite character - the type where they're a bit OOC, the plot meanders and you're not quite sure why you like it. Except it can also be rip-roaringly funny and the characters are OOC in a way that you, uhm, kinda like so you keep reading and don't post any rec links...
That is to say, these aren't really good books. At all. The characters are more funny types than actual persons, the criminals and plots are often really dumb and the gender stereotyping can get appalingly heavy some times.
But, Evanovich is good at writing pratfalls. Her none too successfull bounty-hunter Stephanie is silly, hysterical, funny and not at all cool, which is a welcome change from many a crime novel protagonist.
This book was one of the better ones - I've read a bunch of these before, borrowed from the library, found at hotels and (the very first one) got free with a magazine on the beach. What keeps dragging the later books down is the damn love triangle. Stephanie has a on-off relationship with hot cop for something like ten books, and after 3-4 books her UST with fellow bounty hunter collegue and enigmatic hot manflesh develops into an on-off sexual thryst things. And then she falls for them both and how will she pick one and oh nooo the angst. Here I am happy to say that she seems to basically have settled for an open relationship with the cop and some no-strings sex with the bounty hunter, which would be fine with me if she could just stop seeing that as a temporary thing. The very end of the book promises some kind of resolution, but I am sceptical.
Also, this is a good book if you like exploding cars. They go boom at least once every other novel! Unfortunately, there's also a whole lotta donut, ice-cream, cake, lasagna etc eating in them, so I always get hungry for junk-food when reading.
Totally decent beach reading though, especially compared to a lot of the other drivel out in small resort bookstores
My impressions:
I was curious about Beukes writing when I saw her debut novel, Moxyland, in the store, because a near-future sf about teen kids and computers written by someone not from the US or the England interests me. However, I read some less than positive reviews and decided to hold off for a while. Zoo City otoh won a bunch of prices and had an even more interesting blurb, so I bought it in preparation for our vacation in Spain.
Then I managed to forget it on the floor in my apartment...
But, finally having gotten round to reading it, I can recommend it. It's not a super-duper good book, but it's got a fresh setting, a good (if dark!) plot and her writing is snappy. What lacks is mostly character depth, as in many other thrillers.
The world where Zoo City takes place is half a step removed from ours, and it is very much like Pullman's His Dark Materials gone wrong. Here, only certain people have spirit animals, and they're not well seen. Because when you're a zoo, it means you've killed someone - if it's your guilt, bad karma or a psychic disharmonic in the universe is unknown, but the animalled people are shunted off, hunted and looked at with disgust. That the animal also means you get gifted with some variant of magical gift doesn't make the prejudice any better.
After reading a whole slew of fandom-of-choice/HDM crossovers with precious talking animals, the one cuter than the other, this was a total breath of fresh air, lemme tell you.
Zinzi is the main character and after she got her Sloth, she hankers herself through life by working as an e-mail scammer and a finder of lost things. Easy, since her magic allows her to find the connections between people and what they have lost.
The plot kicks off when she's wrangled into finding a run-away teenage popstar and discovers a whole slew of dirty business. Sensitive readers should beware: The story is violent and contains some really squicky scenes, but I liked that it's not just the cool, slick noir violence which is common in many thrillers.
Oh, for crying out loud, Evanovich, get your girl to pick a man. The Stephanie Plum novels are like reading long, self-indulgent fic about your favorite character - the type where they're a bit OOC, the plot meanders and you're not quite sure why you like it. Except it can also be rip-roaringly funny and the characters are OOC in a way that you, uhm, kinda like so you keep reading and don't post any rec links...
That is to say, these aren't really good books. At all. The characters are more funny types than actual persons, the criminals and plots are often really dumb and the gender stereotyping can get appalingly heavy some times.
But, Evanovich is good at writing pratfalls. Her none too successfull bounty-hunter Stephanie is silly, hysterical, funny and not at all cool, which is a welcome change from many a crime novel protagonist.
This book was one of the better ones - I've read a bunch of these before, borrowed from the library, found at hotels and (the very first one) got free with a magazine on the beach. What keeps dragging the later books down is the damn love triangle. Stephanie has a on-off relationship with hot cop for something like ten books, and after 3-4 books her UST with fellow bounty hunter collegue and enigmatic hot manflesh develops into an on-off sexual thryst things. And then she falls for them both and how will she pick one and oh nooo the angst. Here I am happy to say that she seems to basically have settled for an open relationship with the cop and some no-strings sex with the bounty hunter, which would be fine with me if she could just stop seeing that as a temporary thing. The very end of the book promises some kind of resolution, but I am sceptical.
Also, this is a good book if you like exploding cars. They go boom at least once every other novel! Unfortunately, there's also a whole lotta donut, ice-cream, cake, lasagna etc eating in them, so I always get hungry for junk-food when reading.
Totally decent beach reading though, especially compared to a lot of the other drivel out in small resort bookstores
