Book Review: Sunshine by Robin McKinley
Jan. 18th, 2011 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: Sunshine
Author: Robin McKinley
Published: New York: Jove Books, 2004 (2003)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 405
Total Page Count: 97,030
Text Number: 278
Read Because: personal enjoyment, borrowed from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
century_eyes
Review: When Sunshine visits the lake, she never expect to be kidnapped by vampires. But then she never expects to escape from them, either, or to find herself binding her safety—and future—to a vampire name Constantine. Sunshine is one of those rare books that I complete, close, and still have no strong opinions about. It's a perfectly acceptable book, readable and something that I hadn't read before; the tone, protagonist, and setting are refreshing changes of pace for the urban fantasy genre, not because they're radically different but because they put twists on the usual. Sunshine's narrative has a desperate humor to it that (other reviews tell me) most readers don't appreciate, but I found a convincing vehicle for her nervous, self-deprecating, nonetheless strong mental state. Sunshine isn't another UF protagonist clad in leather and itching to take on the supernatural hordes with biting sarcasm and a good weapon, but a rather a neon tanktop-wearing baker who can stand up for herself but isn't sure that she can stand up to vampires. Her counterpart Constantine is also a refreshing change of pace—he's not handsome, for one thing; he's also convincingly, and intriguingly, non-human. Sunshine's world is more explicitly magical than most UF settings, and it gives the book a pleasant sense of originality.
But while it has these things going for it, Sunshine never seems to ... go. The plot doesn't lack forward motion, but much of it is low in anticipation and foreshadowing, and so it comes in chunk after seemingly random chunk; events are fine in retrospect, but their development is never engaging at the time. It seems impossible that this could happen when the narrative is tied so tightly to Sunshine's mind, but it does. Perhaps the problem is that Sunshine's narrative doesn't make sense: first person narratives are often unjustified, but this one is extraordinarily so. Who is Sunshine talking to, and why? If she's talking to someone from her world, why does she interrupt her story to dump descriptions of her magical setting? If she's talking to an outsider, why does she begin her story as if vampires don't exist at all? From the existence of demons to the next piece of the plot, the book's storytelling frankly feels off the cuff—almost random, and verging on meaningless. I liked some aspects, take issue with others, but it's hard to rouse any strong reaction to a story that just lays there on the page. Forced to come up with an opinion, I'd say that Sunshine isn't worth reading. It's not a bad book, but without redeeming qualities, "not bad" is hardly the same thing as "good." Spend your time elsewhere.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Robin McKinley
Published: New York: Jove Books, 2004 (2003)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 405
Total Page Count: 97,030
Text Number: 278
Read Because: personal enjoyment, borrowed from
century_eyesReview: When Sunshine visits the lake, she never expect to be kidnapped by vampires. But then she never expects to escape from them, either, or to find herself binding her safety—and future—to a vampire name Constantine. Sunshine is one of those rare books that I complete, close, and still have no strong opinions about. It's a perfectly acceptable book, readable and something that I hadn't read before; the tone, protagonist, and setting are refreshing changes of pace for the urban fantasy genre, not because they're radically different but because they put twists on the usual. Sunshine's narrative has a desperate humor to it that (other reviews tell me) most readers don't appreciate, but I found a convincing vehicle for her nervous, self-deprecating, nonetheless strong mental state. Sunshine isn't another UF protagonist clad in leather and itching to take on the supernatural hordes with biting sarcasm and a good weapon, but a rather a neon tanktop-wearing baker who can stand up for herself but isn't sure that she can stand up to vampires. Her counterpart Constantine is also a refreshing change of pace—he's not handsome, for one thing; he's also convincingly, and intriguingly, non-human. Sunshine's world is more explicitly magical than most UF settings, and it gives the book a pleasant sense of originality.
But while it has these things going for it, Sunshine never seems to ... go. The plot doesn't lack forward motion, but much of it is low in anticipation and foreshadowing, and so it comes in chunk after seemingly random chunk; events are fine in retrospect, but their development is never engaging at the time. It seems impossible that this could happen when the narrative is tied so tightly to Sunshine's mind, but it does. Perhaps the problem is that Sunshine's narrative doesn't make sense: first person narratives are often unjustified, but this one is extraordinarily so. Who is Sunshine talking to, and why? If she's talking to someone from her world, why does she interrupt her story to dump descriptions of her magical setting? If she's talking to an outsider, why does she begin her story as if vampires don't exist at all? From the existence of demons to the next piece of the plot, the book's storytelling frankly feels off the cuff—almost random, and verging on meaningless. I liked some aspects, take issue with others, but it's hard to rouse any strong reaction to a story that just lays there on the page. Forced to come up with an opinion, I'd say that Sunshine isn't worth reading. It's not a bad book, but without redeeming qualities, "not bad" is hardly the same thing as "good." Spend your time elsewhere.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
