Eventine
March 14th, 2005, 05:14 PM
I was wondering how FicusFan would take this book, being our resident vampire nut.
Excuse the excessive quoting that's about to go on.
warmed over YA mush with a other authors' ideas
I can't really comment on the other authors' ideas bit, but YA? I was just wondering why you thought this was YA?
it is choppy, awkward, and in some passages incomprehensible, or she is deliberately using a style that she thinks suits her POV character - Sunshine
I thought the author did a good job of bringing us Sunshine's voice in the first person style here. The problem with that, is, as you say at times it can be very choppy and lacking in focus, especially when Sunshine is trying to understand something outside human perception - she (Sunshine) lacks the eloquence to convey her meaning.
when something bad happens she sneaks around and doesn't turn to those in her life that love her because -- she has committed the great sin of thinking for herself (befriending Con), and going against prejudice and stereotypes, and the social status quo (That all Vampires are Evil).
An analogy that helped me work with this was thinking of someone gay "coming out" a long time ago when it was extremely socially unacceptable. Imagine trying to tell something like that to your friends and family. chances are soem will be supportive - but then some won't and others will be just plain hostile. This was the feeling I felt Sunshine was going through.
The whole section where she fantasizes about the mutant-evil/magic gene combination (which just exists so she has a plausible reason to play the lone ranger with Con) is incomprehensible.
I'm with you on this one -- there's a few period's in the book where McKinley slips into flat out exposition mode, and it doesn't work.
In fact for someone who talks about being fascinated by the others, and having all this 'common knowledge' about them she never asks anything of the real thing. She never asks her mother about her father's family, or about her own.
That was frustrating as well. Sunshine's mother should have been such an important character in the novel, and isntead did what? Dumped charms in the kitchen. Hooray. This is where we really needed some exposition, not in a 6 page stretch about mixed blood lines.
The SOF are not very S or very powerful since they can't deal with the creature who runs them let alone actual vampires
One again I think that was sort of the point - the only force really stopping the vampires (apart from infighting) was reasonably toothless and basically there to give the population a warm fuzzy feeling. Those inside who cared, like Pat, realised that things were going pear shaped pretty quickly (hence the 100 year thing).
she used 'had had'
I noticed that as well, and while I'll defend the book being written in Sunshine's voice, that was just too much.
As far as concerns about why Bo had Connie chained instead of just killing him, I thought they sufficiently explained it was torture. There was no way (in their mind) that Connie could escape, and thus they were slowly driving him insane with sunshine (note the lack of capitalisation there :))
What wasn't explained was why Connie didn't just chow down on Sunshine - what made him different from the other Others (OK, that's it for fun with capitalisation).
So to sum up: I thought Sunshine's voice mostly worked, although when it failed it failed pretty bad. Some parts of the book were filled with exposition, but unfortunately not the parts that mattered. The best part of the book was the first third - it has the thrill of Sunshine being locked up but is before the hard to explain vampire powers and the exposition pieces on bloodlines and vampire culture.
Overall I'd say I liked it but that it didn't set my world on fire and probably wouldn't warrant a re-read.
Excuse the excessive quoting that's about to go on.
warmed over YA mush with a other authors' ideas
I can't really comment on the other authors' ideas bit, but YA? I was just wondering why you thought this was YA?
it is choppy, awkward, and in some passages incomprehensible, or she is deliberately using a style that she thinks suits her POV character - Sunshine
I thought the author did a good job of bringing us Sunshine's voice in the first person style here. The problem with that, is, as you say at times it can be very choppy and lacking in focus, especially when Sunshine is trying to understand something outside human perception - she (Sunshine) lacks the eloquence to convey her meaning.
when something bad happens she sneaks around and doesn't turn to those in her life that love her because -- she has committed the great sin of thinking for herself (befriending Con), and going against prejudice and stereotypes, and the social status quo (That all Vampires are Evil).
An analogy that helped me work with this was thinking of someone gay "coming out" a long time ago when it was extremely socially unacceptable. Imagine trying to tell something like that to your friends and family. chances are soem will be supportive - but then some won't and others will be just plain hostile. This was the feeling I felt Sunshine was going through.
The whole section where she fantasizes about the mutant-evil/magic gene combination (which just exists so she has a plausible reason to play the lone ranger with Con) is incomprehensible.
I'm with you on this one -- there's a few period's in the book where McKinley slips into flat out exposition mode, and it doesn't work.
In fact for someone who talks about being fascinated by the others, and having all this 'common knowledge' about them she never asks anything of the real thing. She never asks her mother about her father's family, or about her own.
That was frustrating as well. Sunshine's mother should have been such an important character in the novel, and isntead did what? Dumped charms in the kitchen. Hooray. This is where we really needed some exposition, not in a 6 page stretch about mixed blood lines.
The SOF are not very S or very powerful since they can't deal with the creature who runs them let alone actual vampires
One again I think that was sort of the point - the only force really stopping the vampires (apart from infighting) was reasonably toothless and basically there to give the population a warm fuzzy feeling. Those inside who cared, like Pat, realised that things were going pear shaped pretty quickly (hence the 100 year thing).
she used 'had had'
I noticed that as well, and while I'll defend the book being written in Sunshine's voice, that was just too much.
As far as concerns about why Bo had Connie chained instead of just killing him, I thought they sufficiently explained it was torture. There was no way (in their mind) that Connie could escape, and thus they were slowly driving him insane with sunshine (note the lack of capitalisation there :))
What wasn't explained was why Connie didn't just chow down on Sunshine - what made him different from the other Others (OK, that's it for fun with capitalisation).
So to sum up: I thought Sunshine's voice mostly worked, although when it failed it failed pretty bad. Some parts of the book were filled with exposition, but unfortunately not the parts that mattered. The best part of the book was the first third - it has the thrill of Sunshine being locked up but is before the hard to explain vampire powers and the exposition pieces on bloodlines and vampire culture.
Overall I'd say I liked it but that it didn't set my world on fire and probably wouldn't warrant a re-read.