Moxyland [Kindle Edition]

Before I say anything else I'll state that I think Lauren Beukes is a talented writer. She is clever and insightful, her worlds are clearly imagined and internally consistent, and her characters have distinct voices. But, there are some things that really didn't work for me in Moxyland.

There are two main issues that made Moxyland more of an average, ho-hum experience than a compelling page turner. The first is the characters. There are four POV characters, rotating by chapter: Kendra, Lerato, Toby, and Tendeka. Toby is loathsome, Lerato self-absorbed, Tendeka too easily manipulated, and Kendra too naïve and clingy. In other words, I didn't really like any of them, and Kendra was the only one who really garnered any amount sympathy from me.

Buekes not only made the choice to use multiple POVs, but to also use first person, present tense with all of them. This can make for confusing reading, especially when you pick up the book and don't necessarily remember at first which character you were following when you were falling asleep while reading the night before.

The other issue is that while certain aspects of the book were interesting, I never had a clear idea where the story was going, which meant that my attention frequently lagged. Buekes did a good job of weaving all the disparate character threads together, and there were a few surprises. But surprises work best when the reader was expecting something else.

In this case Buekes never built any expectations in me. The plot often felt unfocused, and at times rambling. For instance, there were some extensive gaming sessions covered in detail, which I can appreciate as a gamer. But they didn't really add anything to the story. It wasn't until the last approximately 25%, when the pacing increased, that I really felt compelled to keep reading.

These things are objectively identifiable, but whether they are hindrances to enjoying the novel comes down to personal taste. For me, a good book grabs me by the collar and emotionally involves me with the characters. That just never happened in Moxyland. For readers with different tastes I expect it's a much better reading experience.

One other thing I'll point out, though this is certainly not specific to Moxyland, it seems to happen a lot with those who use near-future settings for SF. That is that there are too many drastic societal changes and tech advancements for the year in which the novel is set. Moxyland is set in 2018, and while everything she writes seems absolutely (too) plausible, it doesn't seem at all plausible for only six years from now. (10 years from the time the book was published.)

I do recommend reading Buekes' afterward in which she talks about where she got some of her ideas and some developments that have happened since the book was originally published. Interesting stuff.

I had a difficult time deciding on my star rating. Based on general factors and personal enjoyment (or lack thereof), I'd give Moxyland 3 stars. But I feel that's a disservice to Buekes' writing, which is easily worth 4 stars. So I'd rate it as 3.5 and, after literally flipping a coin, rounded up.

KINDLE NOTE: There were a few instances of hyphens or spaces in the middle of words that shouldn't have been there, and a few instances of bad line breaks. But the errors were not pervasive.

Moxyland, by Lauren Beukes, is a pulsating journey through a near-future corporatocracy where most aspects of society appear under the surveillance and control of an inflexible governing entity, seeming equal parts intelligence gathering, law-enforcement, and corporate oligarchy. It takes place in 2018, mostly in South Africa, but like any great novel, its story transfers across boundaries and cultures, finding resonance anywhere people find themselves increasingly surrendering their autonomy to a creeping 'corporate-state megacomplex.' Moxyland follows the lives of four young principle characters (along with about a dozen of their friends, enemies and associates) who's worlds variably intersect in interesting ways, increasingly so as the novel progresses. It is written in an engaging 'four-voices, first-person' style, with each new chapter being told in the present by one of the four main character-narrators. Each speaks with a particular style, attitude, rhythm and lingo, adding richness and complexity to their narratives. Beukes breaks ground by achieving a seamless blending of cool and novel lingo, occasional Afrikaans slang, and in the case of one voice, an appealing conversational familiarity with the reader, often addressing us as if we were his mates. The unpredictable 'rotation' of narrator order as the chapters progress - not knowing who is coming next - further increases the reader's sense of tension and uncertainty, in a story already brimming with suspense and intensity. Toward the end of the book, there is more rapid cycling of narrators, with some chapters only a couple of pages long; as the suspense and nervousness build, you too may find yourself covering paragraphs with your bookmark to keep your eyes from looking ahead. Moxyland is that kind of book. It will grab hold of you while you're reading it, and not let you go for some time thereafter.

Plot details are elsewhere if you really need to know them. But if you are this far, you are intrigued enough. Read it. Moxyland will not let you down and will have you wishing for more.

Beukes is a keen observer of our present, and an imaginative teller of our possible futures. Nothing feels derivative about this work. Moxyland does not feel descended from anything but the mind of a thoughtful and perceptive writer, transcends genre categorization, and truly stands on its own shelf. Highly creative in content, style and language, the worlds her characters inhabit feel disturbingly further from fiction than should make us comfortable. Our own Earth here truly is the alien planet. It is a smart, at times wickedly funny, and ultimately unsettling story of an entirely believable early 21st century world. Moxyland will enjoy broad readership, and Lauren Beukes is a writer to watch.

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. Software on the phones lets the police punish citizens by tasing them or cutting off access to their bank accounts and credit lines. In Cape Town, we meet four young adults:

Kendra is an art school dropout who has become an advertisement for a soft drink company. They pumped her up with biotechnology that makes her healthy and beautiful and gives her some of the attention she craves, but the biotech also makes its brand name glow through her skin and gives her a constant craving for their soda. Toby is a vlogger whose wealthy mother ("motherbitch") has just cut him off because he spends all his money on drugs, girls, and expensive clothes. Eager for the website hits that prove people are paying attention to him, he spends his days walking around Cape Town looking for cool stuff to livestream to his vlog. Lerato is an AIDS-baby who was raised in a corporate/government orphanage. She now works for them as a programmer, and she's got an easy life in the posh corporate world, but she can't quite manage to stay loyal to the corporation that's given her everything she's got. Tendeka wants to be a revolutionary, so he rallies kids, coerces them into not accepting government sponsorships, and uses them to commit useless acts of vandalism and civil disobedience. He manages to pull Toby, Lareto, and Kendra into his latest schemes against the Cape Town government.

These four young disillusioned people can't manage to effectively change their world or their places in it. They have no noble ideology (beyond the vague feeling that things should just be "different" than they are), and the things they do just end up causing more harm than good. They are ineffective when they attempt to rage against the corporate machine because they are selfish and thoughtless and they refuse to give up what the corporation offers -- technology, fashion, status, their favorite soda, and the feeling of being connected.

I like this idea, but I didn't like Moxyland mostly for the simple reason that I despised every character in the book. Every single one of them was pathetic, hateful, nasty, rude, cynical, sarcastic, and said "f***" nearly every time they opened their mouths. Not only did I dislike them and think they were pathetic -- they all had these same feelings toward each other. They all irritated me and each other and it was pure misery to be around them.

But that's the point, isn't it? Lauren Beukes wanted me to dislike all her characters and was, therefore, successful in that aspect of her novel. Because they are such a loathsome bunch of people, I cannot sympathize with them. In fact, I start to root for the corporation instead. I think this is the message, the warning: If we buy into what the corporation is selling, we should expect to become pathetically horrid creatures who deserve to be at its mercy. I like this message, but I spent eight hours with my face contorted into a grimace of disgust and I wish I had that time back. Moxyland would have worked better for me if there had been just one character who was different and who I could like. Instead, they all felt like nearly the same nasty person to me. They all had the same voice.

I listened to Brilliance Audio's version of Moxyland, narrated by New Zealand actor Nico Evers-Swindell, who's just as nice to listen to as he is to look at, though he needs to work on making his female characters sound more feminine. Brilliance Audio, I'm glad to see that you're producing Angry Robot titles, but next time would you please include a picture of Nico on the back of the CD box? You usually have a picture of the narrator but his face is missing from Moxyland, just like the faceless people in the cover art. That way, if I don't like the story, at least I can entertain myself by looking at Nico. Thanks for listening.

Lauren Beukes is talented and I think she accomplished what she wanted to with Moxyland. I can't really blame her for not writing it for me, and my 2.5 star rating reflects my lack of enjoyment of this novel and not Ms. Beukes' promise as a new SF author. Therefore, I am definitely on board for the next Beukes novel. In fact, Zoo City is already in my TBR pile.