This book was on a Flavorwire list of books you won't be assigned in high school, so I decided to check it out. 
 And it's interesting. It's not quite what I expected, but I'm glad I read it. The story merges a post-apocalyptic future with a Caribbean voodoo context, and the characters are multi-generational and well written. The dialect wasn't fun to read, but I'm glad I listened to it rather than read it because the narrator, Peter Jay Fernandez, did a much better job than I ever could have done in my head. 
 I plan to recommend it to my creative writing students, who love this genre but don't have much experience drawing characters and integrating conflict and the world they've created.