I had a lot of fun with this book. First off, a bit of background: Sojourner 'Scotch' Smith is a regular 17 year old biracial girl living in Toronto; she doesn't quite fit in anywhere, she's fighting with her best friend, and she's desperate to win an upcoming dance battle so she can afford the deposit to move into an apartment with her brother.

Normal issues. For a normal world. Except things aren't exactly normal. Scotch has a thick sticky blackness growing on her in places. And strange monsters visible only to her float around her at the most inopportune times. It only gets weirder from there.

Scotch and her brother Rich, an aspiring rapper-poet with stage fright, head downtown to an open-mic night at a bar. She befriends a truly great character, Punum, in the bathroom at the bar and then her brother is absorbed by a glowing ball, a volcano appears in the middle of Lake Ontario, and trippy things start happening. This is the part where everything got original. It was a truly trippy experience reading this book, mixing multicultural Toronto with Jamaican legends and LSD.

Scotch was a great protagonist. She's a typical teenager - disagreeable, impulsive and occasionally says stupid shit she doesn't mean -, but she's also compassionate, loyal and smart. She's complex and that makes her entirely endearing. I'd read an entire series about her, paranormal or not. The supporting characters are fun and fully characterized as well, each with their own personalities. I particularly liked Punum, an out-spoken Sri Lankan butch lesbian punk in a wheelchair, and the way she challenged Scotch.

I hope this is the future of YA because smart, well-written and diverse is just what I want. 8.6/10

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A pretty quick read and bizarre. This wouldn't be a lot of people's cuppa but I enjoyed the weirdness. The world falls into chaos: a volcano rises from the bay, Sasquatch & floating horse heads are among us, people are changed physically, and Scotch is growing a layer of black sticky blemishes. The plot is all over the place. If you like weird, give this a try. ( )

Magical realism for mature young adults. Many will probably miss the folklore references (I only caught the most obvious ones) but that doesn't harm the story. The main character is a rebellious black teenager, with a history, some of which she may deserve. Self-centered, but with a heart, and, eventually, more fortitude and courage than even she thought she had. The unreal part is small, until about halfway, when all logic and normalcy falls apart, at least for Toronto. There's never any explanation, even on fantasy term. This kind of story normally annoys me, but the writing and characterization won the day.

Recommended. ( )

RGG: Yes very diverse, but the plot doesn't seem to hold together--really just a description of a science fiction event, rather than a story. Reading Interest: 12-YA.

Scotch thinks her biggest problems are her over protective parents, facing her ex boyfriend, and pulling together her dance moves before the big competition. But then the Chaos, a worldwide cataclysmic event in which the rules of physics become patchy — a volcano appears in the middle of Toronto, Sasquatches and other strange creatures start appearing on the streets, and people are changing. Her brother goes missing, people are dying, and a black blemish is quickly spreading across Scotch's body.

The Chaos that plunges into the world is strange, unsettling, and sometimes terrifying, like if Salvidor Dali and Franz Kafka envisioned the apocalypse. This kind of story could have quickly gone off the rails, but Hopkinson handles it deftly with vivid descriptions and an array of compelling and interesting characters. And I really liked that those characters represented a diverse set of backgrounds with none of them coming off as token characters.

There was so much strangeness and so many horrible things that I wasn't sure how this story could possibly end, but I needn't have worried; the ending was perfect and left me clutching the book to my chest, not wanting to let it go. ( )