Zoo City

How it reads

Zoo City is science fiction (urban fantasy noir, specifically), and its dominant mood is dark. It goes to difficult places and doesn't look away. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in a big city setting, in the future, told in the third person, staying close to one character. Its central concerns are identity, justice and class and society. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is bittersweet: it resolves, but at a price. At 416 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.