Brown Girl in the Ring

From LeoWiki

Score	Title	Author	Genre
5.6	Brown Girl in the Ring	Nalo Hopkinson	Urban Fantasy

Technophilia	4
Secularity	6
Quality	5
Xenophilia	7
Personal Tilt	6

Temagami natives have sued the government of Ontario for control of all pine exports. Amnesty International -- taking a break from its usual activities of protesting arbitrary imprisonment, state-sanctioned rape, and executions -- funded the lawsuit. The international community... *brain explodes*

Uhm, nonsensical background aside, downtown Toronto has been abandoned to the poor and the homeless. Such "suburban" pillars of civilization as Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough have erected barricades and checkpoints to prevent anyone from escaping. In the power vacuum, leaders have arisen.

One of them is Rudy, head of the Caribbean crime syndicate. He rules from his secret CN Tower lair with an iron fist and a bloodthirsty zombie servant on a leash.

Another is Mami, a grand-matriarch healer who has taken possession of the Rosedale Farm. She dispenses penicillin with one hand and processed aloe root with the other.

Outside Toronto, the fearsome Premier of Ontario reigns supreme. Her plot and dialogue are ridiculous and can be ignored.

The hero of the book is Ti-Jeanne, granddaughter of Mami. Suffering from visions, she has just born a child and is gaga over a drug-addicted gang member.

The cardboard plot place the book firmly in the Young Adult category. The reader is left feeling as thought Toronto is one big giant one-dimensional paper doll. Nothing other than the main four characters is fleshed out at all.

My advice to the author would be to drop the future setting. The geopolotics are plain awful. Otoh, with those discarded, Brown Girl in the Ring would make a good contemporary urban fantasy in the vein of Gaiman's Neverwhere and Mieville's King Rat.

Unless you are specifically looking for a book set in Caribbean mythology or post-Apocalyptic Toronto, give this one a miss.