Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
Dec. 31st, 2004 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienI don't read vampire stories, except in the rare cases (Barbara Hambly, I suppose Terry Pratchett) that they're by an author I already know and trust. Even at that, I didn't pick this one up in hardcover. I almost did, once, but I opened a bookstore copy at a random page and hit a sentence that clunked, so I resigned myself to waiting for the paperback.
Oddly enough, when I did come to read it, I didn't notice any clunkiness at all. Maybe that was because the narrator has a pretty distinctive if not literarily elegant style, and the story carried me along.
It's an odd sort of book, though. The setting isn't quite our world, but one in which vampires and 'demons' other nasties, and magic, exist and are known to exist, to the point that there's a government agency set up to deal with them. Obviously there are subtle differences in the history, and Christianity, as far as I noticed, is entirely absent, which makes it makes it seem a bit unlikely that the rest of the background is even as recognizable as it is, down to the names of states. I thought that maybe the idea was that the world didn't become noticeably different from ours until maybe the early twentieth century, but that rationalization really doesn't work for me. The allusions to Sherlock Holmes and Perrault jar a bit, in that context. And the bit about a guy called Benjamin Sisko running a company called 'Earth Trek' (but the protagonist doesn't believe that's his real name) -- well, that was a drop-out-of-the-story moment. The Beauty and the Beast references were a very McKinley touch, though -- and not just the explicit ones.
There seemed to be something a bit odd about the pacing, to me: a hundred pages from the end, I felt as though I was getting a feel for the world and waiting for the real story to get going. Twenty pages later, the main action was over and the characters were dealing with aftermath for the rest of the book. Or perhaps the big set-piece fight was never the real point.
In spite of the flaws, I enjoyed this. If Ms. McKinley ever feels moved to write a sequel, I'll gladly read it.
Oddly enough, when I did come to read it, I didn't notice any clunkiness at all. Maybe that was because the narrator has a pretty distinctive if not literarily elegant style, and the story carried me along.
It's an odd sort of book, though. The setting isn't quite our world, but one in which vampires and 'demons' other nasties, and magic, exist and are known to exist, to the point that there's a government agency set up to deal with them. Obviously there are subtle differences in the history, and Christianity, as far as I noticed, is entirely absent, which makes it makes it seem a bit unlikely that the rest of the background is even as recognizable as it is, down to the names of states. I thought that maybe the idea was that the world didn't become noticeably different from ours until maybe the early twentieth century, but that rationalization really doesn't work for me. The allusions to Sherlock Holmes and Perrault jar a bit, in that context. And the bit about a guy called Benjamin Sisko running a company called 'Earth Trek' (but the protagonist doesn't believe that's his real name) -- well, that was a drop-out-of-the-story moment. The Beauty and the Beast references were a very McKinley touch, though -- and not just the explicit ones.
There seemed to be something a bit odd about the pacing, to me: a hundred pages from the end, I felt as though I was getting a feel for the world and waiting for the real story to get going. Twenty pages later, the main action was over and the characters were dealing with aftermath for the rest of the book. Or perhaps the big set-piece fight was never the real point.
In spite of the flaws, I enjoyed this. If Ms. McKinley ever feels moved to write a sequel, I'll gladly read it.