A Reader's WIP - For Review/Critique

A reader has asked for some assistance with a current WIP - I'm not sure of the genre but will see if I can get details. This is from the opening of the book...the writer specifically wants to know; does this feel like a good beginning (it was originally elsewhere in the story, but seemed to gradually move up to the front), do we get a sense of the characters at all, from this? Or are we confused?

But today was hot and getting hotter. Ruby yawned, legs crossed, and fell backwards into a haphazard pile, braids twisting beneath her. She rested the comic she had been reading open-faced on her round stomach, watching it rise and fall and rise.

“It’s magic today,” Ruby heard, Ma’am yelling from around a couple of
corners. Ruby tilted her head back until she could see that broad
Hawaiian-flowered back, upside-down. She thought about this for a long
moment.

“You think so?” she said, chewing on a braid.

“The Egyptians, them were magic,” said Ma’am, “Look outside.”
It seemed, for a moment, as if she was right—air in anticipation. Ruby
couldn’t tell where the sidewalk ended, merging into the shimmering
heat, into the ripe burning air into the cloudless sky cradling the
teetering tops of New York buildings. She scratched an armpit and crawled
upright again, sinking back into her book.

Two hours.

This was a home for the books, not customers, and most first-timers
were intimidated by the row upon row upon bookshelf upon box, of comics
and posters and dried spearmint candy, and the door that always opened
with a silver crash. Ma’am’s counter was connected by a twinning path to
both the backstairs and the entrance, while bookshelves draped and
canopied the wanderer. The floor was a scuffed wooden affair, barely
visible in the dappled shadows, the light twisting around Wonder Woman’s
slight frame.

Ruby played jungle games here, sometimes, on the slower afternoons.
She took her shoes off first, but always left the jacket on. It was a
gift from her father, maroon red, with a double march of buttons down the
front to mid-thigh, hiding all but a hand-span of dress. Crawling, ears
perked for lions or bears, she would hunt, emerging hours later eyes
ragged, hair wild, claws wicked instead of human paws. Once, Ma’am closed
and forgot her, leaving that wild tigress to curl beneath a swollen
moon, the jungle bed softened, breathing slowed, by dreams of silent
super-men.

“Ruby, honey?” Ruby pulled herself out of the wretched streets of
Gotham.

“Ruby?” Ma’am yelled again.

“…Yeah?”

“Take care of the store, only for a bit, will you please? I’m running
to the attic for lunch.” Ruby nodded, turning back to her comic.
There’d only been two customers since she’d arrived, and she knew Ma’am would
be back there for a while, reading her son’s journals and going through
boxes twenty or so years old-- a one o’clock habit of hers. Ruby
settled deeper within her nest and propped her feet up on the bookshelf
before her.