Saturday, May 12, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi




Beasts Made of Night is the first in a YA duology based upon Nigerian culture/mythology.  That said, while readers - such as myself - may not be familiar with the Nigerian culture that influences this book, the book relies very heavily on plot tropes that will be pretty familiar to typical fantasy readers.  This isn't necessarily a problem - tropes are common because they work, as I've written here in the past - but Beasts Made of Night fails to really utilize these familiar elements effectively, forming a story that until the end feels relatively rote.  And then the ending, which sets up the second book, didn't really feel set-up well enough to work for me.  The book is fine, but I was hoping for more at many points only to be disappointed.

More specifics after the jump:



----------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------
In the City of Kos, Sin is considered a disease, an impurity that must be removed from the body.  If the City was to contain too much sin, legend tells that the godlike Arashi would return to destroy it.  But there exist mages who can call forth sins from peoples' bodies, where they form dangerous beasts and other special humans, known as Aki - or sin-eaters - who possess the ability to defeat and eat those sin-beasts, taking those sins into their own bodies.

But despite their alleged importance to the world, Aki are treated as outcasts and feared by society.  They are paid little for their services and treated like dirt - meanwhile the Nobles and Royal family monopolize their use, making it hard for the rest of the City to afford their necessary services.  And when Aki absorb too much sin, they cross, and their bodies and minds essentially fail, leaving them dead.  That's assuming the Aki don't die fighting the dangerous deadly sin-beasts they are asked to eat before they get to that point.

Taj is legendary among the Aki - known by various nicknames such as "Lightbringer" or "Sky-fist" - as not only is he old for an Aki (a ripe age of 17), but the various sin-beasts that he consumes stay with him on his body rather than fading away.  He had always thought he would try to help the other Akis while fighting sin-beasts until the day he crossed, and that would be it.

But in vanquishing a deadly sin-beats of the King of the City, Taj demonstrates a strange and unheard of ability to command the sin-beast, if just for a moment.  It is then he's asked to serve as the Royal Family's personal sin-eater, and to live a life that is absolutely foreign to him.  But the Royal Family and its chief wizard have plans for the City and the Aki, and Taj will soon find himself caught up in schemes that will change the fate of the city...for good.
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Beasts Made of Night has a fascinating world with a lot of interesting elements that seem like they could come together to make a really good story.  The interactions between the mages and the Aki, the magic and powers that power the City as well as the other fantastical and scifi elements work really well here (while I'd term the book a fantasy, high level math is referenced as being used by the mages so there's SF elements as well) The elements drawn from obvious parallels in the real world work too: the contrast between the lives of the Nobles/Royals and the poorer citizens is excellently demonstrated, the oppression of the Aki and the cheating of illiterate all feel like natural believable elements of this world that made me interested in the plot.

Unfortunately, the book has issues of pacing that really waste a lot of the effort of this worldbuilding - every time the book would start to get interesting about a status quo, it would shift Taj to a new one, without really taking the time to explore what had happened.  Taj himself doesn't help matters, as he's very passive despite his abilities and just goes along with the flow of other characters for the most part.  This really hits the most during the ending, where a major plot twist occurs which did not feel setup at all and just came out of the blue, leaving me cold.

Again there's a lot of promise in some of the characters, particularly some of the minor ones, but it's never really explored.  The book isn't exactly bad - it's totally fine, but just unexceptional, which is a disappointment given the setup.  I really don't have much more to say (yeah the plot summary is as long as the rest of the review on this one) other than that - I finished the book relatively quickly but found myself not caring too much about the characters and being disappointed at how abrupt things repeatedly got.  Alas.
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