Zenn Scarlett - Book Review

Zenn Scarlett
by Christian Schoon

When you're studying to be exoveterinarian specializing in exotic, alien life forms, school... is a different kind of animal.

Zenn Scarlett is a resourceful, determined 17-year-old girl working hard to make it through her novice year of exovet training. That means she's learning to care for alien creatures that are mostly large, generally dangerous and profoundly fascinating. Zenn’s all-important end-of-term tests at the Ciscan Cloister Exovet Clinic on Mars are coming up, and she's feeling confident of acing the exams. But when a series of inexplicable animal escapes and other disturbing events hit the school, Zenn finds herself being blamed for the problems. As if this isn't enough to deal with, her absent father has abruptly stopped communicating with her; Liam Tucker, a local towner boy, is acting unusually, annoyingly friendly; and, strangest of all: Zenn is worried she's started sharing the thoughts of the creatures around her. Which is impossible, of course. Nonetheless, she can't deny what she's feeling.

Now, with the help of Liam and Hamish, an eight-foot sentient insectoid also training at the clinic, Zenn must learn what's happened to her father, solve the mystery of who, if anyone, is sabotaging the cloister, and determine if she's actually sensing the consciousness of her alien patients... or just losing her mind. All without failing her novice year... (synopsis from Goodreads)

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This is an interesting book to review, as it had many high points but also quite a few small lows for me. Because of this, the review might seem as though it’s leaning towards the negative, but it’s important to establish first that I actually really loved this book. It held my interest all the way through, and despite some problems I found it a fascinating and well-executed idea. I’m definitely looking forward to more books set in this universe.

So, first off, this isn’t really a story so much as a collection of episodes, like one of those TV series that follows around the local country doctor or vet. Which is funny, because this book actually is about a vet. Or rather, about exo-vets, a clinic on Mars that cares for and treats alien animals. I know, what a fantastic concept, right? The book follows Zenn Scarlett, a young exo-vet in training, as she goes through her duties at the cloister (clinic), attempts to pass her tests, and treats all kinds of weird and wonderful creatures. Almost all children want to be a vet at some point when they’re growing up so that they can work with animals, and I can really see this appealing to a younger reader. The characters, story and themes also seemed suited to the younger YA reader. Zenn can be rather naive, and a lot of the moral messages are stated very simply, repeated often, and pushed quite heavily.

This can get a little frustrating at points, as I do in fact agree with the main message, but also felt very sympathetic towards the ‘towners’. After all, the exo-vet cloister is keeping some animals that would kill humans if they were to escape, despite Zenn’s protestations otherwise. In fact, there is an incident that kinda revolves around this very point. Clearly hostility and sabotage are not the answers, but at the same time, the cloister could reach out a little better to the locals, as Otha himself realises later in the book. I felt like there was some subtlety missing from the moral messages and particularly from the reactions of the characters (particularly at the end – would this one incident be enough to overcome so much fear and suspicion?).

The book is mainly made up of episodes involving the treatment or care of different creatures, and in a sense this is quite repetitive. The animals are interesting, but many of them are similar (a lot seem to be giant versions or mixes of Earth animals), and I had hoped for a few really alien aliens. There is a mystery tying the whole thing together – who is trying to sabotage the clinic and why? – and a threat to the cloister in the upcoming council’s vote. This is kept in the background until near the end, and the larger mysteries of the novel – Zenn’s mother, Zenn’s father, the Indra incidents, Zenn’s weird mind communication with animals – are all left for future books to explore. This is a little disappointing, as the greater story doesn’t really kick in until very close to the end, meaning that the pace suddenly picks up and the drama really gets going, and then... it ends.

However, although this sounds like a major flaw, it actually really isn’t. I enjoyed this story a lot, simply following Zenn around and learning about all the animals. This first book could be seen almost entirely as a worldbuilding book, setting the scene for later novels, and yet, the worldbuilding is so good that it doesn’t matter at all. The atmosphere and setting are perfect; Mars really feels like a backroads, almost cowboy-ish world, and the societies and people felt so real. There are hints about what’s happening on Earth, and hints about other worlds and cultures beyond Mars, and a fantastic solution to FTL travel that involves alien animals, which is extremely appropriate to the story. This isn’t just a story about space vets, which is itself an interesting enough idea; it’s clearly a well thought-out universe in which exo-vets are actually completely vital, due to the method of space travel employed. This is really well done.

The characters themselves are largely good too, though Liam is somewhat bland and Zenn can be a little whiny at times and preachy at others. I also think Zenn must have flunked her dice roll when it came to assigning wisdom. High intelligence, low common sense. Most readers will probably see who has been sabotaging the cloister very early on, and then begin to second guess because it’s just so obvious. However, Zenn is mostly a very likeable and sympathetic character, and many of the side-characters, such as the sheriff and Vic, are fantastic. Hamish was my favourite, and I so desperately wish rikkasets were real. I want my own Katie!

Overall, Zenn Scarlett is a very fun and enjoyable book, quite slow moving and episodic, but with enough in it that kept me engaged and interested throughout. I’m looking forward to reading more set in this fantastic universe, especially as it seems as though the plot is about to really pick up steam in the next book.


Thank you to Strange Chemistry and NetGalley for providing a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Zoo City - Book Review

Zoo City also has one of the best covers I've seen

Zoo City is an Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning urban-fantasy book by Lauren Beukes. It tells the story of Zinzi December, an ex-journalist and recovering drug addict who became ‘animalled’ after her actions led to her brother’s murder. Now she carries around a sloth, as well as a nasty drug-money debt and a lot of guilt. The day she gained Sloth she also developed a new, magical talent for finding lost things. When she is hired to locate a missing girl, one half of a famous teen pop duo, the case begins to lead her to darker and more dangerous places than she had expected.

Zoo City was not quite what I was expecting, but then, I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting. Perhaps something in which the fantasy or science fictional element was more prominent, not necessarily the focus of the plot, but at least more central. In this, the animals, the magic, the strangeness, are all just there, while Zinzi gets on with things. But you know what? This is a large part of what makes Zoo City so brilliant. Not only are the magical elements never fully explained (which I often prefer anyway), they are not even really important. Except that they are, just not in the ways the reader might think. Animals and the consequences of being animalled are vital to the characters and their world, as well as allowing the author to explore ideas of prejudice, guilt and the stigma attached to rehabilitated criminals, amongst other issues, without ever becoming preachy or heavy-handed. Each element that makes the world strange – the animals, the undertow, the mashavi – is revealed almost as a mundane detail in the background while the missing-person mystery takes centre stage. And then, suddenly, all these little details become vital as the plot takes a darker turn, and the existence of the animalled becomes central to the story after all. This seems like a risky approach, but it is a risk that really pays off.

2 Weeks of Movies - Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - 7/10

(some medium-sized spoilers)

This was another video-store-guy recommendation. I remember seeing the trailers for this one and thinking that it looked, frankly, rubbish. Apes become intelligent, rampage, take over the world, lots of CGI and not much else. Right? Wrong.

Although I enjoyed the Cloverfield recommendation more, I was glad I watched this one, if just to prove that you can’t always judge a film by its trailer. Often trailers show all the best bits, heightening anticipation for a movie that in reality flops like a dying fish. This was the opposite; the trailers I saw showed only the rampaging apes scenes, giving the impression of a standard-fare disaster movie propping itself up with the Planet of the Apes name. In reality, the rampaging apes were one tiny bit at the end of a more thoughtful and complex film that was actually ridiculously emotional (I blame James Franco’s puppy face).

The film was surprisingly slow-paced, building the main plot up slowly and taking time to actually make the audience like the little ape and his carer. This was done well. Really well, actually. I’m not an ape person; for example, I’m constantly astonished by people who manage to find monkeys cute (yes yes I know a monkey isn’t technically an ape). That means that this film really had to convince me to feel something for the main ape character, Caesar, which I would have felt automatically for, say, a kitten. But it did manage to. We saw Caesar grow up, we saw his wonderful child-like innocence and curiosity, we saw his love for his human carers, and we saw him begin to interact with the outside world. Then we saw his confusion, his slowly dawning realisation that he is not like others, trapped between the human and animal worlds, too intelligent to fit in. When he poignantly asks Will, his carer, if he is a pet, I actually felt myself go cold and my eyes begin to prick.

Then we saw Caesar’s dismay and his depression, and his agony as he was taken away from the only family he has ever known and put with a bunch of apes that he had no idea how to relate to. We also saw Will’s desperation to get him back. For him, Caesar was like an adopted child, wrenched cruelly away from him. This was all scripted, filmed, and acted so well that it was completely believable and extremely heartbreaking. The CGI used to craft Caesar’s face and his expression-filled eyes was perfect, and Andy Serkis’ acting was spot on. The other apes were also CGI-ed and acted to perfection, adding more pathos as well as a welcome touch of humour to the film. We also get to find out what Draco Malfoy does in his summers away from Hogwarts. Torture apes, apparently.

Although the general story and its twists and turns are nothing surprising – in fact, they are even slightly cliché for science fiction fans – everything plays out so well that this is easily forgiven. The film’s title is slightly misleading, as it does not actually show how the apes managed to take over the planet. This is only the very beginning, the event that slowly began to tip the scales, the summit of the slippery slope. What happens afterwards is only inferred by the existence of the original movie, and the audience must fill in the missing years for themselves. A nice little touch early on in this film references the main character in the original. A suggestion at the end perhaps explains how the intelligence-virus spread over the world, and how the apes managed to take advantage of depleted populations in order to gain control. Still, the details are left a mystery.

This is how to do a prequel. It doesn’t need to be set right before the original film; it doesn’t need to cram in as many character and cameo appearances from the original as it can; it doesn’t need to fill in every hole and explain every little thing, even the things no-one was asking about (midichlorians?); and it certainly doesn’t need to bleach all the mystery out of the original (Star Wars prequels I’m looking at you). A prequel should always add something to the original rather than attempt to take over from it. Well done Rise of the Planet of the Apes. You need to hire a better title-writer though.

No matter how much you think you won’t care about what, when it comes down to it, is actually a fairly overused and obvious story in sci-fi terms, you will probably find that you can’t help it. Caesar is just too sympathetic, the characters too charismatic, and James Franco’s eyes too puppy dog. I didn’t find it groundbreaking, and I wasn’t falling off my seat with excitement, but it was unexpectedly thoughtful and enjoyable. I was impressed.