It wasn't bad, though I didn't like it as much as Midnight Robber, but this was her first novel so I'll give her another chance. ( )

Octavia Butler Recommends.

3.5. Brown Girl in the Ring is a classic work of urban fantasy, or perhaps mythic horror, and I'm glad I read it. Hopkinson writes with grace and control, and her evocation of a near-future dystopian Toronto where Afro-Caribbean magic has turned a family dispute into a battle of epic proportions is fascinating and richly textured.

This novel is the best (perhaps only good?) SF portrayal of traditional Caribbean religion that I've read. While the antagonist's black magic is gruesome, the spirits themselves are the most memorable characters of the book, benevolent and full of personality. It's a welcome change from urban fantasies that feature spooooky Voodoo practitioners. The near-future setting is also memorable, and I'm a bit disappointed that there isn't a followup series where Ti-Jeanne and her neighbors solve magical crimes in inner-city Toronto.

I did think the characterization could have been stronger, or the storytelling better suited to such archetypal characters. I liked a lot about Ti-Jeanne's character, but the prose style created a distancing effect and I didn't feel fully invested in her fate. I suspect Hopkinson was trying to find a compromise between contemporary prose and her book's folktale antecedents, and for me she didn't hit quite the right note. ( )

In a post-riot Toronto that the rich and privileged have fled, barricaded, and left to crumble, the inner city has had to rediscover old ways: farming, barter and herb lore. Now the monied need a harvest of bodies, so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, and a tragic mystery surrounding her family and bargain with the gods to save herself. My husband read this for his Caribbean Folklore class he took this term, and he’s been insisting that I read it ever since, even though I really didn’t think I’d like it that much. I was right: The dialect in this book was really difficult for me, but the traditional folk-tale structure of the story revived a lot of it. There were notes of African folklore, Anansi stories, and even a little bit of Neil Gaiman’s storytelling structure present. Not really for me, for the most part, but I can see why it was so well-loved. ( )

Pretty certain that [book:Shadowshaper|22295304] can trace some of its roots to this book. This is the not-so-YA version, darker in substance, but ultimately much more hopeful than I expected.

You can get the shape of the story from the first ten pages: Toronto's city center has been abandoned by anyone privileged enough to leave, but now they've found a use for the citizens who remain: organ "donations" are in demand. And then there's Ti-Jeanne, a new single mother who's trying to figure out a lot about family and love, and is tormented by unwanted visions of others' deaths. That would be an interesting enough tale, but there's a lot more to the story that follows than what those details sketch out.

Clearly I need to read [book:Ti-Jean and His Brothers|6471136] now too. And I want to know how the folk songs in the epigraphs go---I couldn't begin to figure out the rhythms, but there was one I did know and I realized the raw lyrics didn't suggest how it went, either. ( )