I was very wary of listening to this one, after being extremely bothered by the one the week before that had a similar pre-show warning. I was relieved to find that in this case the usage of the real-life event didn't bother me at all. Phew!
I struggled to maintain interest in the first half of the story. There was just too little happening for me. I like dragons, but having a low-key conversation with this dragon on the porch while the city is in real peril didn't do much for me. He just seemed so apathetic about his own survival, I found it hard to care; if he isn't driven to survive, then it doesn't give me much to root for. When he actually took the dragon up on its advice to go find his way to the barge, I found the story much more interesting. When he saw firsthand hints of the "Haint" that's where I really decided to listen to the rest. I think I would've given up before that point, but I did really enjoy the narration and I was just enjoying listening to the sound of her voice.
I was glad the Jemisen managed to tell this story about Katrina, with a worthy speculative element, and without blaming the ugliness afterward on the monster, and without being preachy.
Besides the sloooow beginning, the only other thing that bothered me was that the Tookie POV seemed distant, and sometimes inconsistently so. As the water is rising and the city is in peril, I never really got a hint of emotion from him. This made it hard to really get into the story because it seemed like he just didn't care if he died or not. His intelligence seemed inconsistent too. In the beginning he sees the dragon and he's pretty sure it's not an alligator, but only pretty sure, as if alligators have wings. He takes it speaking into stride as well. But then near the end of the story the dragon tells him that he is one of those who works to bring in the storms, and Tookie says in his narration that he'd suspected from the first time he'd met the dragon. And I wanted to say "No, you didn't. You thought he was an alligator. You were telling me your thoughts at that time and you never said anything about suspecting this flying alligator was bringing the storm with it". It seems for this reason that the POV is inconsistently distant, only telling me some parts of his thoughts, which I find distances me from a character.