Nalo Hopkinson

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.… (lisätietoja)

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.… (lisätietoja)