Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

Every  once in a while a novel comes along that’s touted as new, exciting, daring, meaningful, poignant, fresh, full of big ideas, etc. That’s what I’ve heard, so that’s what I was expecting and hoping for in Lauren Beukes’ novel Moxyland  — especially since it has a nice blurb from William Gibson and has been compared to Neuromancer.

Moxyland takes place in a futuristic (2018) Cape Town, South Africa. The Cape Town setting is unique, and I was hoping to explore it a bit, but Beukes did not make use of her setting — Moxyland could have taken place anywhere. This Cape Town of the not-too-distant future is a police state run by big corporations where the police control people through government-approved cell phones... Read More

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

The main character of Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City is a former freelance journalist named Zinzi December. Zinzi is cool, intelligent and carries some big mental baggage. Despite her flaws, you will love her almost immediately. Zinzi lives in Zoo City, which is essentially a slum in Johannesburg for people who have been burdened with animals. In the world of Zoo City, people are magically attached to animals after they’ve done something particularly awful. People with animals are the outcasts of society, and the more conspicuous the animal the harder it is to lead a normal life. Zinzi carries a sloth, which isn’t the easiest critter to conceal.

Since Zinzi is not able to work a real job due to her fuzzy companion, she makes ends meet by using her natural ability to find lost things for people. On one of this lost item cases she stumbles... Read More

Some of your favorite authors take some time to answer our questions:
Got any news to share with us?
Laura Bickle / Alayna Williams: My first YA novel, The Hallowed Ones, will be released by HMH Graphia on September 25. Pitched as Witness meets 28 Days Later, The Hallowed Ones is a paranormal thriller in which Amish girl must protect her family from a violent contagion, even as fear and denial threaten to erode her community from within.

Mark Lawrence: Why yes I have! My daughter (age 8 and severely disabled) wrote a book that's out-selling my own in the US! It's a picture book and she used a head-switch and communication device to guide the pl... Read More

Some of your favorite authors take some time to answer our questions:
Got any personal news to share?
Chaz Brenchley: Hee. Ordinarily I spend my time trying to persuade people that the actual physical day-to-day life of a writer is the dullest thing imaginable (“I sit at a desk and drive a keyboard; I’ve been doing it thirty-five years; my cats lead much more interesting lives than I do; may I tell you about my cats?”) -- but as it happens, I do have personal news. I got married, and moved five thousand miles to a whole new continent. Where the sun shines. A lot. I have ripening chillies in the garden! (And the cats’ lives are still more interesting than mine, or will be once we let them outside...) So, yeah. Newcastle novelist moves to California and gets married, shock horror. My friends are still reeling. So am I... In other news: my own most re... Read More