Zoo City

Music, murder, magic. Lauren Beukes blends up a classic post-cyberpunk novel set in South Africa, where people’s sins are made visible in the form of magically bonded animals. It’s an interesting conceit, and the action moves along well enough, but somehow it lacks the pulse-pounding intensity of the original stuff, like Neuromancer or George Alec Effinger’s When Gravity Fails trilogy. But hey, a new voice is a rare thing these days, and a few flaws can be forgiven.