Broken Monsters

This is a page turner, but with a few more flaws (e.g. thing I didn't enjoy as much!) than the other two books of hers that I've read. She manages to create modern Detroit as a background character in a wonderful way, even sort of mocking herself in a character who is new to the area, pseudo-exploiting it. The central characters are two women–a mother and her daughter–who have multi-layered personalities, but the other characters feel so one-note that they end up distracting from the main themes, given the multiple-perspective structure of the book. When we get away from Layla or Gabi's perspectives, my interest waned.

That said, it's a solid thriller with a few mystical-horror elements which worked well. I hope we get to see these characters again...?

This is more like a 3 and a half, because I really enjoyed reading it and I think Beukes is an amazing writer.

I read the bulk of the book on a cross-Atlantic trip spit between two flights. My first flight was just over 9h and I got to the grand denouement just before the plane landed. I now wish I'd stopped reading then and never finished the book.

The problem I have with it is that the buildup is so perfect, the plot is just the right amount of mysterious and also perfectly paced, and the characters are all so very likeable — especially the two teens Layla and Cas who are both too cool and too witty to be convincing (think Sorkin) — but the ending spoils it all by being didactic.

There's a moment in the book when the events really start taking off and the whole thing turns symbolic and dreamscapey, which seemed to me really uneven and confusing, and the return to the realistic that happens after leaves many events unexplained.

It's probably the most contemporary book I've ever read, and it handles modernity and the Internet culture with grace (an author who uses words like Creepypasta and NyanCat and Snapchat in the right context is a rare animal indeed), but sadly, it ends up being preachy. I get the author's point but I'm also a Millennial through and through and I can't help but roll my eyes at Gen X'ers getting righteous about our use of social media and about the Internet culture. I felt like in Broken Monsters, Beukes demonises these things in an overly literal and preachy way. I also resented her a bit for turning the characters that I loved so much into puppets in a morality tale.