There are two things that really stand out for me in this book - the characters and the language. A lot of the dialogue here is based (at least I'm presuming it is) on Caribbean speech patterns, and being unused to those it took me a while to fall into the rhythm of the words but when I did it was fantastic; very different from the NZ English patterns I'm used to, but aesthetically compelling all the same. I really like books like this that expose me to different types of language use, I find them so enjoyable! But Brown Girl in the Ring has more going for it than language, and the main strength here I think is the characters - particularly the granddaughter and grandmother duo at the heart of the book. The relationship between them is so flawed, so marked with pitfalls and resentment and love, that I would happily have read a story about them alone, even without the creepy skin-flaying antagonist who, for me at least, makes this story as much horror as fantasy. (The scene with Melba is going to keep me up at night, I just know it.) But I love too the sense of community underpinning the world here - and this is especially clear at the end - all these small people living in the deserted disaster of the city, and gradually turning it into something beautiful and growing again, turning it from "other" and into "home". Which is probably the theme of the book in a nutshell, now I come to think of it.