Sunshine - book review, sort of.
May. 6th, 2006 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSurvived the week and really have no wish whatsoever to discuss it. Over. Thank you very much. For a reward, I am taking a 24 hour break from the phone. I turned it off. Also taking a 24 hour break from people if at all possible - not quite, since do live in a city and it is a beautiful day outside and is impossible to step outside my apartment without running into someone. One of the hazards of city living, when you want to get away from people it is impossible. Sort of wish it rained today like it was forecasted earlier in the week - then could have watched videos all day without feeling guilty.
Books came today - three, that I ordered from Amazon. Normally buy my books from the Coliseum book store near where I work. Since it's an indie and indie's are a rare breed in NYC, which is slowly being taken over by evil megastores like *cough*barnesandnoble*cough* (which is much worse than Borders - at least you can find things at Borders and the people are helpful. B&N makes me crazy. If it weren't for my sci-fantasy habit, I'd avoid B&N altogether. But it is the closest book store to me at work and at home that contains the sci-fantasy books that are my guilty pleasure. Course it does not carry the ones I want. No, it carries the best-sellers, which I don't want. So...I ordered from Amazon. And since the Post Office tried to deliver the books while I was at work, I had to ask them to redeliver them today, which is why I normally don't order from Amazon.
Books were Proven Guilty by James Butcher - the new Dresden novel. Which yes, did hit the shelves at Colisuem, and before I got it from Amazon, actually, but there you go. Definitely Dead and Dead as a Doornail the last two books in the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlain Harris. Once I finish all of them, I'm considering writting a review. Maybe not. Just fun reads.
Just finished Sunshine by Robin McKinely. (whose name I probably misspelled, but too lazy to look it up. Even if it just involves crooking my neck to the right.) Excellent book. Possibly the best I've read in the gothic/vampire urban fantasy genre. It's told in a stream of consciousness style and examines how the worste things are in our own minds. What we imagine. Sort of re-examines the whole vampire mythos from an entirely new angle and the characters, unlike the characters in most of these novels are not described as achingly beautiful. They feel normal. Attractive in a way. But not necessarily physically so. McKinely also spends a great deal of time building her world, and she is detail oriented. More so than I normally have patience with. I find the tiny details of most sci-fantasy novels somewhat annoying and unnecessary and more often than not get in the way of the story - as if the writer is more interested in telling me about this fantastical world he or she has created than actually telling me a story. Neil Gaiman is an example, as is the writer of Jonathan Strange meet Mr. Norrell. A lot of readers apparently like that. It annoys me, which is why I stopped trying to write sci-fantasy - no frigging patience for all the tiny details, I want to get to the story dammit. So the fact that Mckinely does more or less the same thing in her novel and it didn't take me out of her story, break the flow, or aggravate me, is interesting. I think what she does differently is instead of "telling" me what her world is, she shows, and shows how it affects her character's state of mind. Also it's told in first person and for some reason or other this works better in first person - less cold and distancing.
That said, Mckinely takes a long time to get you into the story. The first twenty-some pages are rambling exposition. Sort of like reading a lj entry - possibly one of mine, although I don't tend to write many about what I've done or who I've met or who I'm with. Then you get to the action and since the action is major, with a capital M, you are pulled in fast.
It starts with two people - of completely different worlds - being held captive together. How they work together to survive and what happens afterwards. One of the people is Sunshine - our heroine, a 20 something baker in a family owned coffee house, the other is a vampire - and Mckinely's description of vampires makes well the ones you've seen in the movies and tv seem rather silly in comparison. She does not romanticize them.
They are alien, disgusting, and scarey. Other. The prickly truce the two form to defeat a common enemy and their odd, I don't want to say romance, but it's the best word, is riveting, because it is odd and not like what I've read before.
But the best thing about the novel is it delves into what we fear and how fear can make us crazy. That what is inside our own minds is far worse than anything outside it. Something many horror filmmakers have forgotten. You do not have to show the audience the horror, just suggest, let the audience's imagination fill in the gaps.
One of the scariest movies I saw as a child, one that gave my brother nightmares for months and we both still remember vividly, was a PBS presentation of Shirly Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. I've also seen the black and white Robert Wise film called The Haunting - which also is terrifying in its own way. Both dealt with the fear of what lies inside the mind, not what is external, not what we see. But what we think we see out of the corner of our eye. The Spielberg remake was an unscarey mess because the filmmakers did not understand that. Hitchcock did - as you see with his classics - the Birds, Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, etc.
Less is more when you want to scare someone. Halloween - the original was another example. Very subtle images.
Suggest. Not show or tell too much. McKinely examines this in her novel, what scares her character the most is not what lies outside her, but what lies inside. What type of monster am I? OR rather what type of monster can I become? Of course, I'm very self-reflective so art like this, appeals to me. It may or may not appeal to you.
Next up?
Proven Guilty by Dresden, I think.
Books came today - three, that I ordered from Amazon. Normally buy my books from the Coliseum book store near where I work. Since it's an indie and indie's are a rare breed in NYC, which is slowly being taken over by evil megastores like *cough*barnesandnoble*cough* (which is much worse than Borders - at least you can find things at Borders and the people are helpful. B&N makes me crazy. If it weren't for my sci-fantasy habit, I'd avoid B&N altogether. But it is the closest book store to me at work and at home that contains the sci-fantasy books that are my guilty pleasure. Course it does not carry the ones I want. No, it carries the best-sellers, which I don't want. So...I ordered from Amazon. And since the Post Office tried to deliver the books while I was at work, I had to ask them to redeliver them today, which is why I normally don't order from Amazon.
Books were Proven Guilty by James Butcher - the new Dresden novel. Which yes, did hit the shelves at Colisuem, and before I got it from Amazon, actually, but there you go. Definitely Dead and Dead as a Doornail the last two books in the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlain Harris. Once I finish all of them, I'm considering writting a review. Maybe not. Just fun reads.
Just finished Sunshine by Robin McKinely. (whose name I probably misspelled, but too lazy to look it up. Even if it just involves crooking my neck to the right.) Excellent book. Possibly the best I've read in the gothic/vampire urban fantasy genre. It's told in a stream of consciousness style and examines how the worste things are in our own minds. What we imagine. Sort of re-examines the whole vampire mythos from an entirely new angle and the characters, unlike the characters in most of these novels are not described as achingly beautiful. They feel normal. Attractive in a way. But not necessarily physically so. McKinely also spends a great deal of time building her world, and she is detail oriented. More so than I normally have patience with. I find the tiny details of most sci-fantasy novels somewhat annoying and unnecessary and more often than not get in the way of the story - as if the writer is more interested in telling me about this fantastical world he or she has created than actually telling me a story. Neil Gaiman is an example, as is the writer of Jonathan Strange meet Mr. Norrell. A lot of readers apparently like that. It annoys me, which is why I stopped trying to write sci-fantasy - no frigging patience for all the tiny details, I want to get to the story dammit. So the fact that Mckinely does more or less the same thing in her novel and it didn't take me out of her story, break the flow, or aggravate me, is interesting. I think what she does differently is instead of "telling" me what her world is, she shows, and shows how it affects her character's state of mind. Also it's told in first person and for some reason or other this works better in first person - less cold and distancing.
That said, Mckinely takes a long time to get you into the story. The first twenty-some pages are rambling exposition. Sort of like reading a lj entry - possibly one of mine, although I don't tend to write many about what I've done or who I've met or who I'm with. Then you get to the action and since the action is major, with a capital M, you are pulled in fast.
It starts with two people - of completely different worlds - being held captive together. How they work together to survive and what happens afterwards. One of the people is Sunshine - our heroine, a 20 something baker in a family owned coffee house, the other is a vampire - and Mckinely's description of vampires makes well the ones you've seen in the movies and tv seem rather silly in comparison. She does not romanticize them.
They are alien, disgusting, and scarey. Other. The prickly truce the two form to defeat a common enemy and their odd, I don't want to say romance, but it's the best word, is riveting, because it is odd and not like what I've read before.
But the best thing about the novel is it delves into what we fear and how fear can make us crazy. That what is inside our own minds is far worse than anything outside it. Something many horror filmmakers have forgotten. You do not have to show the audience the horror, just suggest, let the audience's imagination fill in the gaps.
One of the scariest movies I saw as a child, one that gave my brother nightmares for months and we both still remember vividly, was a PBS presentation of Shirly Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. I've also seen the black and white Robert Wise film called The Haunting - which also is terrifying in its own way. Both dealt with the fear of what lies inside the mind, not what is external, not what we see. But what we think we see out of the corner of our eye. The Spielberg remake was an unscarey mess because the filmmakers did not understand that. Hitchcock did - as you see with his classics - the Birds, Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, etc.
Less is more when you want to scare someone. Halloween - the original was another example. Very subtle images.
Suggest. Not show or tell too much. McKinely examines this in her novel, what scares her character the most is not what lies outside her, but what lies inside. What type of monster am I? OR rather what type of monster can I become? Of course, I'm very self-reflective so art like this, appeals to me. It may or may not appeal to you.
Next up?
Proven Guilty by Dresden, I think.