I was looking at the line of April TBR book spines on my shelf last night, thinking about how good they all looked and wondering how many of them will disappoint me. I’ll say it yet again: I wanted to like Beasts of Prey (Beasts of Prey #1) by Ayana Gray. For a little while there, I thought I was going to. But this book starts off so much better than where it goes and where it ends, and I am not on board with this book. We need more African fantasy, yup. But this is not it.

Koffi is an indentured beastkeeper, stuck indefinitely with her mother in the Night Zoo. But when the ringmaster makes Koffi really mad, things happen that she can’t control and doesn’t understand, leaving Koffi on her own and the Zoo a pile of ash. Meanwhile, Ekon is about to follow his ancestors into the role of a Son of the Six, but he pauses in his mission and throws his future into uncertainty. Koffi and Ekon both need to hunt down the murderous Shetani in the Greater Jungle in order to turn their destinies back around. What would happen if they worked together?

When I started reading Beasts of Prey, the African fantasy world-building was so interesting, so intriguing. I really wanted to like it; heck, I was madder and madder the further I read because the first few chapters were of a caliber that was acceptable, but then deteriorated rapidly. I saw some good in it, and then it was a slow train wreck. I think my first indication that something was off was the slave-master dynamic a couple chapters into Koffi’s perspective. (This is a three POV book.) It was really off, and not consistent with either the slave’s (indentured servant, technically) or master’s characters as they were given thus far. Then the beginning dragged on. Then the downward spiral picked up speed.

(If you read this book and liked it, maybe skip to the end. My panning of it will probably just anger you.)

There is one writing misstep I can never forgive, and that is bad writing. Adequate writing I can work with, especially in genre fiction and especially if I am given good characters, a great story, or some other addictive quality. Below-average writing I can excuse in some cases. (See Twilight.) Consistently bad writing? That’s a big fat no for me. I’m going to let the text speak for itself for a minute.

“He thought he could see opaque tendrils of steam rolling off the very trees in wispy sighs, slicking their arms, legs, and foreheads in a sheen of sticky sweat. He licked his cracked lips involuntarily at the same time Koffi’s stomach audibly rumbled” (p293). (He thought he saw steam slicking their bodies with sweat? Or was it? The subject and object are off. And no to pairing the clauses in the next sentence. “Very” should not be there. Neither should “involuntarily.”)“It took Ekon a moment to understand the cause of the unease running down his length, but then he pinpointed it” (p304). (His what? His length? And why go through this whole mental process (which is done like this constantly)?)“Koffi almost thought it looked distinctly curious” (p369). (Too many modifiers. Adverb. Half-butted qualifiers. How about, “It looked curious to Koffi”? Or just “It looked curious.”)“Lkossa’s stars twinkled like diamonds against its obsidian-black night sky. Through her barred window, Koffi could not see them” (p419). (Cliche much? And then you just described something we can’t see in our POV? Heck, no. And why, actually, can’t she see them? Also, obsidian and black are the same thing; one needs to go, and that would be “black.”)

What began with grammatical errors and typos led to overuse of adverbs (especially the word “very,” see above), repetitive adjectives, nonsensical spatial things, convenient plot devices, inconsistent characterizations and problematic reactions… And I kept stopping to wonder if Gray has ever been in a jungle. I’m going with no. Because the way the characters move through the jungle has weird physicality to it, lacks any sort of realism or sense of what that would really be like. And I’m sorry, but you can’t use a map in a jungle with zero landmarks and no trail. What were they even looking at to “figure out where they were”?

There are cliches (see above), difficult sentences (often with pronoun confusion), metaphors and similes that sound good but don’t make sense, and inconsistency, full stop. For example, someone would be wounded one second and then they would bound up and run to someone in the next. Or someone would be angry and then they’d smile at someone warmly. Or they wouldn’t know how to do something and then they’d do it. Or they’d tell us it was the most tired they’d even been when we’d just seen them more tired in the scene before. And don’t get me started on the POV shifts. Yes, I do mean the strange back and forth at the beginning when the reader keeps getting dragged back in time and I also mean that Adiah’s perspective is not needed (or at least could have been done better), but I mostly mean the confusing head-hopping. The plot was predictable, average, not always interesting. There were a lot of side-quests and randomness and long scenes of unbelievable introspection. We had to believe what we were being told without being convinced, basically. The romance between kinda flat, stock characters was neither earned nor timed right.

And the ending? Let’s begin here: I totally knew every twist long before it was revealed, like it had slapped me in the face ten, twenty chapters too early. (When I started the last chapter, I predicted the last word of the book. Not even joking.) I take that back, there was one surprise, but I kind of feel like there was no way of knowing that one, which is another type of cheat, actually. I would have to go back to make sure, but as a reader I felt cheated by it. Also, when a cliffhanger involves the bad guy on top, that is not an appropriate ending to a book. That is still the dark night of the soul or the All is Lost moment, which comes before the climax and resolution, even if there is more to the series.

This is the cover on my copy. It lacks the artistry of the original, I think. But maybe it gives you something that the title really doesn’t: a clue.

Before I leave off my complaints, let me ask the obvious: why the new cover, publisher? The people on it are beautiful, but it’s not a great cover, it looks a little cheesy, and people were drawn to the old one. Lots of strange editorial choices all around.

At book club, some people liked the world building, called it solid (though they admitted in the same breath that the structure and characters needed work). There was plenty of mythology, fable, and legend to look up. Everyone also seemed to like Ekon being neurodivergent (though some people thought he was just OCD. I and some others strongly disagreed). People also defended the teen characters regarding their bad decisions, because they’re teens. I found some of the decisions to be forehead-slapping stupid, but I can understand my fellow readers’ point. I think they were trying to be nice to a debut novel.

In conclusion, I would say this book suffered from a publisher seeing potential in an idea and an editor failing to edit this into a serviceable piece of literature. The author? It was on Gray to follow her characters, which it appears she very much did not, which led to a plot plan lacking authenticity.

People at book club recommended N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy, Akata Witch (Nnedi Okorafor), and The Gilded Ones (also a trilogy, Namina Forna) instead. I was also not a huge fan of the Tristan Strong series, but my son was, and it was better than this, though aimed at a younger audience. I will not be continuing the series, which is:

Beasts of PreyBeasts of RuinBeasts of War (final book in 2024)

“She knew that poverty could be a different kind of monster, always lurking and waiting to consume. For some, death was the kinder beast” (p45).

“A wise man keeps his weapons sharp, but his mind sharper” (p116).

“Tao thinks my biggest fear is that I won’t master my power with the splendor, but in truth, that is not what I fear most. / My fear is that I’ll never get used to it” (p153).

“’You do not have to be the largest or the most dangerous fighter, Ekon,’ he said quietly. ‘So long as you are the fastest’” (p187).

“Often, the beasts that lashed out the worst were also the ones hurting the worst” (p261).

“…whatever was buried in Ekon was buried deep. If he wanted to dig it out, he’d have to do that himself” (p261).

“’You must do more than try, Koffi,’ she said quietly. ‘You must succeed’” (p342).