Beasts Made of Night, by Tochi Onyebuchi

I very much wanted to like this book: I met the author at a dinner and he was charming, smart, and delightful, plus the premise is fascinating. Unfortunately, the writing leaves much to be desired, and I won't be picking up the sequel.

Taj is a young man with an incredible skill; he is an aki, someone who is able to Eat the sins of others, freeing them from guilt and disease. The aki, though necessary to life in the country Kos, are reviled, cast out from their families once their eyes turn a tell-tale pale shade, spat upon by other citizens, and cheated out of fair earnings. They don't live long, either, as the weight of all that Eaten sin eventually consumes them and they Cross. Taj is one of the best, but a job at the royal palace involves him in something much bigger than just his own struggle to survive.

It's such a cool idea, inspired by a mixture of African and Islamic lore, but the execution is pretty rough. First, the timeline is really confusing. Not in the sense that we're going back and forth in time, but because it's hard to tell how much time is actually passing. At first it seems like just days, but then perhaps becomes weeks, though there is little indication if this is the case. The emotions of the characters are at turns transparent then obtuse, and it changes rapidly. There's some romantic tension, but with at least three of the secondary characters, which I suppose could be a decent representation of the vicissitudes of the teenage heart, but in the book is just confusing because Onyebuchi describes each one so seriously that I'm not sure who we should be paying the most attention to.

The ideas are all there, and the writing shows promise (it's certainly engaging), but this needed a heavier editorial hand to guide it into a more coherent plot with better pacing and a more consistent set of main characters.

Shop indie!

Comments

Popular Posts