Can’t fault Beukes’s imagination but this is possibly her least successful effort. The main angle has been explored before and often Beukes goes for cheap suspense rather than thoughtful contemplation. It’s not bad but it’s not as good as it could be.

Zoo City is a scab of a community, a crowded slum where some people a bonded with an animal 'familiar' - to use a (pardon the pun) more familiar term - referred to as 'zoos.' Zinzi lives in Zoo City, along with her Sloth. Zinzi has a 'gift' of finding lost things. Though she doesn't like looking for lost people things are a bit tough for her right now and she needs the work. She's hired by music producer Odi Huron to find a teen pop star - one of the members of a group known as iJusi.

At one time in her life, Zinzi was a reporter, until a drug habit landed her in prison. Now she's weighed down by guilt and her sloth, trying to find her path. But as she searches for iJusi she encounters something pretty deviant...someone is snatching Zoos and cutting them up to sell their parts to make a little money to buy drugs. And someone who knows about Zinzi's past is making her out to be criminal.

Through the dirty, gritty streets in Zoo City, Zinzi has to evade both the criminals who inhabit the area and the law who would rather leave Zoo City to rot.

I've written before, not too long ago, about my appreciation for Beukes' writing. <em>Zoo City</em> is part horror/dark fantasy and part urban fantasy, and entirely original. It's been a long time since I've read something that was this unique. It is also incredibly gritty and dank. Beukes writes so sharply that I felt I could smell the neighborhoods and the sewage drains and I could feel the fur of Zinzi's sloth.

Beukes' writing is so incredibly captivating and the ideas she works with are so original, and her South African locations so unusual (to me at least) that it's easy to overlook the simplicity of the plot. There's an awful lot that Beukes doesn't tell us - which I actually kind of like ... up to a point. If answers don't come at all and I'm left with more questions than answers at book's end, then something might be missing.

Still, I am at a point where, if I see Lauren Beukes' name on a book, I will want to read it because I know I will be taken somewhere completely new, and I like that a lot.

Looking for a good book? Lauren Beukes' <em>Zoo City</em> is a highly original dark urban fantasy that will leave you breathless and you might not even notice that the plot is a little on the thin side.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I've read several of Beukes stories at this point so am used to her unique writing style so I feel I should have been fully on board for some new take on the urban fantasy genre. Manifesting your own animals was a fascinating concept but something about the strange language made it impossible for me to connect with this story. Trouble is, I've picked this up and set it down on three separate occasions and haven't been able to make it past 10%. It's time to call it quits.

Urban fantasy/magic realism. Zinzi, like other murderers and criminals, is burdened with a magical animal, a sloth. Eking out a living in Zoo City, Zinzi uses her talents running email scams and using her ability to find missing objects. When she is tasked with a missing persons case, she is roped into a world of stardom and secrets.

This was so weird, but it roped me in straight from the beginning. One of the freshest things I read in 2016