SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Beasts of Prey by Ayana Grey

 

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Beasts of Prey by Ayana Grey: https://t.co/FtGrM7keJQ

Short Review: 7.5 out of 10
1/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) December 23, 2021

Short Review (cont): An African myth inspired YA Fantasy novel features an indentured girl and a neurodivergent traumatized boy questing together into the jungle for a deadly beast. Very good lead characters and setting, but a lot of pointless stuff surrounds the plot.
2/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) December 23, 2021

Beasts of Prey is a Pan-African inspired young adult fantasy novel by debut author Ayana Grey.   The novel isn't based upon a single African culture, or even a specific region, with creatures from East African and South African myth, a language based upon Swahili, and a religion that is itself wholly invented.  It's also a book that features a lot of classic YA tropes of the moment, with male and female dual protagonists, each keeping their own secrets, etc. etc.   

And well, those tropes are overused because they can be done well, which Beasts of Prey largely does.  Both its main protagonists are likable and interesting, with teen boy Ekon being neurodivergent and suffering from trauma and teen girl Koffi dealing with both poverty and coming from an oppressed people.  Add in a setting that is really well done, with its African inspirations, and I can see why this earned a bunch of praise from people I respect.  At the same time, the book spends a good amount of time on some pointless flashbacks and doesn't really spend enough time on some other ideas, which really prevents it from pulling off all its ambitions.  
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A hundred years ago, The Reckoning devastated the City of Ikossa, leaving the earth and sky torn apart in its wake.  Ever since then, a horrifying monster known as the Shetani has roamed the Greater Jungle outside Ikossa, shredding all who see it to pieces, and killing countless people over the century in horrible horrible ways.  

For Koffi, indentured to the notorious Night Zoo with her mother due to her father's debts, her problems are worse than the Shetani, even as the Shetani is found to have slaughtered another zoo keeper in the night.  A member of the Gedezi people, oppressed by the ruling Yaba people in Ikossa since the Reckoning, Koffi just wants to be safe with her family, but when the Zoo's oppressive zookeeper pushes her, she unleashes a magic deep within her that sets the Zoo on fire, bringing the enforcing Sons of the Six running to the Zoo. 

Ekon's father was killed by the Shetani, but he and his older brother were adopted by the Ikossa temple, with his brother becoming one of the Sons of the Six just like his father.  Ekon wants to do the same to make his father proud, but he's haunted by his father's death, by the calls of his father's voice from the jungle, and by a compulsion to count and deal with things in threes that he's embarrassed to admit.   He's no warrior, with more an interest in books, but he's so close to becoming one of the Sons....when Koffi's fire bring him to the zoo and face to face with the Shetani once more.

Soon Koffi and Ekon find themselves forced together in the greater jungle searching for the Shetani, each for their own purposes, with all they care about on the line.  But there are other dangerous beasts besides the Shetani in the Jungle...to say nothing of the other humans who might also be in pursuit, are just as dangerous......
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Beasts of Prey starts with a prologue flashback from the perspective of a young magically gifted teen named Adiah, which then ends on a cliffhanger, before the book flashes forward 100 years to the third person perspectives of Ekon and Koffi.  The book then occasionally flashes back to Adiah for small segments (to moments before that cliffhanger), but this is Ekon and Koffi's stories really, which each present day chapter alternating between their perspectives.  

Which works because one of the strengths of this book is its two main characters.  Koffi is a girl who has basically been in slavery with her mother since her father died and left them with his debt, and whose people, the Gedi, are basically oppressed by the ruling Yabas for their differences.  She has little conception of what she and her mother would do with freedom, and a boy in the Zoo is basically a brother to her, so the idea of leaving it, even in freedom, is hard for her to think about.  But she's also brash and impulsive, traits which, along with her magical gifts, result in her needing to go into the Jungle to find and capture the Shetani, helped only by a boy she doesn't even know.  

Ekon by contrast is a bookish boy who is both neurodivergent - he seems to have some form of OCD in which he is constantly counting to 3 and has trouble with things that come in sets nondivisible by 3 - and traumatized by his father's death.  And so even though he's obviously not a warrior, he is desperate to join the Sons of the Six (the Six being the gods the city worships), and willing to take big risks to manage that, so as to make his father proud and to redeem himself.  And so he allies himself with Koffi, stealing a book on the Jungle that only someone bookish like him would know about, to try and make it into the jungle.  

It goes without saying in this type of book that Ekon and Koffi start to fall for each other, as the two mesh well despite their very different attitudes, with Ekon being a planner and Kofi an impulsive person by contrast - with Koffi being tolerant and caring of Ekon's traumas like no one before, and Ekon's book knowledge allowing him to cover up for some of Koffi's mistakes, even as his trauma makes him freeze up at times when Koffi might need him.  Their relationship generally works well, although the book could've used a little more time with the two not under threat and just talking to each other to make it work a little bit better (the two never discuss Ekon's compulsion for example, but Koffi knows about it enough to make a big supportive comment in the climax, which baffled me for example).  

Also working really well is the setting, especially once we get into the jungle.  The various creatures the protagonists encounter in the Jungle are all interesting in various ways as they are generally drawn from different African myths (one, per the author is all made up, but otherwise they're all drawn from various inspirations). I recognized a few of them from other books, and these takes are both different and interesting in how they pose challenges or help the protagonists who encounter them.  The hidden truth behind the book's antagonist, and how that antagonist's power really works is also done well, with the reveal working due to clues planted earlier in the book quite nicely. 

Not everything works though, unfortunately.  The Adiah flashback chapters are basically a waste of time after the prologue, which when combined with the present day chapters are enough to give the reader and the protagonists a clear idea of what's really going on even without us knowing Adiah's full story.  And so learning what led up to the prologue for Adiah doesn't really add anything other than take away our time from the protagonists who actually matter (a fact made more confusing by Adiah's plot being the only part in first person).  I kind of wonder if there's an earlier version of this book which didn't start with the prologue, but instead had with Adiah's flash back chapters being told in order, which would have let those chapters at least be intriguing.  Instead, they're just utterly pointless.  

And those chapters also take away space that really could've been better spent on background for the major characters, and on interactions between them.  One final reveal in the final chapters didn't really hit me, because it relied on a relationship one of the protagonists had with a side character who we barely saw since the protagonist spent so little time with him before he joined Koffi; similarly, the conflict between the Gedi and Yaba people could almost have been entirely omitted as it never gets time to go anywhere. Add in the reliance on a trope I hate - the one protagonist hides a secret from the other and never spits it out even when he should until it's too late trope....which is really bad here because it basically goes nowhere as the characters reconcile almost immediately - and well, this book just isn't really as successful as it could be.  

Still, it ends on an intriguing note, and it's worth a try for someone looking for African-inspired Young Adult SF/F (although I would recommend a bunch of other books first).  I will probably be back for the sequel to see if it improves.