After reading Lauren Beukes debut novel Zoo City(my review), I decided to move onto her second novel Moxyland. The book is very different and it threw me a bit. Where Zoo City had a mystery plot as the main thread connecting the book together, Moxyland is more of a mish-mash of scenes containing the four main characters. I’m not sure I liked the book as much, so let’s delve in and figure out why.

There are four main characters in the book and the chapters jump from one point-of-view to another as we switch characters. After watching GRRM do this technique so effortlessly, it’s not a shock to see that Beukes isn’t quite as good as GRRM. The voice of the characters doesn’t change much between chapters and there are times when plot points get confusing.

The book is basically a near-future look at South Africa with some interesting ideas (I loved the police technique for dealing with the mob) and not much of a plot. The are characters who are working with the government/business corpratocracy willingly or not so willingly and people who are fighting against it to different degrees. The characters seem (at times) more there to spout their parts then real characters The whole point of the book is to revel in the scene and see the pretty ideas go past. But I’m not sure the book completely works.

The book, as I mentioned above, isn’t that straight forward or linear. And there were numerous times where I had trouble figuring out what was happening and who it was happening too. But, having said that, it was still a fun read. There were a lot of cool ideas and some interesting scenes. I think I might need to re-read the book to decide how much I like or dislike it.. I think Beukes has a strong future as she grows as a novelist and will be looking forward to future books from her. Mildly recommended.