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Zoo City is a fantasy story set in a fictional version of Africa. If you kill somebody, an animal will randomly show up and be magically bonded to you, and you’ll also gain some special ability. This book focuses on Zinzi, a young woman who is bonded to a sloth and has the ability to find things people have lost. She’s gotten herself tangled up into some trouble, mostly of her own making, and she gets herself into even more trouble trying to get out of that trouble.

I had very mixed feelings about this one. I liked the premise and the world-building. I liked Zinzi, the main character. She had depth and nuance. I liked the sloth. I liked her boyfriend, although we didn’t see that much of him. The story started out interesting, but the plot could have been more coherent than it was, and I thought things grew less and less clear as the book progressed. Toward the end, it was often unclear to me why Zinzi chose to go certain places and do certain things. It all kind of fell together at the end, but I never bought into how Zinzi drew her conclusions. I think the author tried too hard to keep the reader in suspense, but neglected to give us a chance to figure things out on our own so that the explanations we finally got at the end didn't really feel earned.

I grew less and less happy with the direction the story went in, and I was very unsatisfied by the way it ended. Spoilers about the end: (view spoiler)[I was exasperated that nothing Zinzi did managed to help anybody or make anything at all better. The kids she was trying to help all died, her boyfriend may or may not die, the people who were primarily responsible for all the death and mayhem in the book are on the loose, and Zinzi herself is on the run with counterfeit money, apparently off to exploit the connections of her boyfriend’s lost wife and kids, and we have no idea how things will turn out for her. I prefer that a book end with, at the very least, some sense that something positive has been accomplished, so there was pretty much nothing I liked about the end of this book. And it never made sense to me, even in the context of the fantasy, how or why Zinzi was getting cryptic e-mails from the murder victims. (hide spoiler)]

This is the second book I’ve read by the author. I read Broken Monsters 4.5 years ago, rated it 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, and I remember almost nothing about it. I think I’m likely to remember this one better, although I may prove to be wrong, but I’m rating it lower at a plain 3 stars. I was thinking 4 stars for the first half, but the closer it got to the end, the less I liked it. I would love to read a different type of story with a similar setting though.