![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerReading: Sense and Sensibility. I have a bad feeling about Willoughby.
Also reading: At Large and at Small, a collection of essays by Anne Fadiman. I have discovered that I have a weakness for familiar essays. I should try to write one. Hmm.
Planning to Read: Twice Upon a Marigold, by Jean Ferris. It's the sequel to Once Upon a Marigold, which is a funny book, so hopefully this will be too.
I can't decide if I think the title is cute or silly, but it's not as bad as the title to the sequel of I Know What You Did Last Summer, which is I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. That may have come all the way around bad and into good again.
Reviewing: Book Review: Sunshine
I like this book. I like the characters, both as characters and as people; I like the coffee shop, which deserves special mention for being awesome; and I very much like the worldbuilding.
There are a lot of good things to say about characterization in this book, so I’ll pick just one. The main character, Sunshine, and her mother love each other but don’t understand each other. It’s very strained—they don’t talk unless they have to—but her mother isn’t demonized for it, and it’s very well drawn.
Also: THE COFFEE SHOP. I want to eat there. I want to have a giant cinnamon roll! And handmade cherry tarts made with fresh cherries! And Death of Marat (which is berries covered by a fluffy white cake thing, and the best name ever for a dessert).
Finally, the worldbuilding. The world is a fractured version of our own—similar enough to have a Marat, but different because it has vampires and demons and, evidently, a recent World War III type thing called the Voodoo Wars.
One small flaw: none of the characters behave like they’ve been through a war. No one has relatives who died (except possibly Sunshine’s Dad’s family with whom she had no contact), no one talks about shortages during the war (which Sunshine would have noticed, given she works at a coffee shop, and which would have occurred given the level of infrastructure damage there seems to have been).
But that’s not very noticeable while reading the book, even for people like me who are way too involved with the setting. What is noticeable is the intense level of detail in this world. Much of it is very quotidian—for instance, there’s a whole genre of trashy books about the Others (vampires, demons, etc), which Sunshine discusses in loving detail.
A big part of the charm of Sunshine is Sunshine’s voice: very discursive, even chatty, laid-back and slangy. The slang is both extensive and intuitive, so it creates a vivid picture of a different world while remaining completely comprehensible.
I would be really pleased if McKinley wrote a sequel to this. The world is easily big enough, and it sounds like Sunshine’s going to have a life plenty exciting enough to support another book. And there’re so many more questions I want answered. What were the Voodoo Wars about, anyway? What makes Con such a special vampire? And what other recipes does Sunshine keep hidden in that coffee house?
How long does a post need to be before it gets an lj-cut, anyway?
Also reading: At Large and at Small, a collection of essays by Anne Fadiman. I have discovered that I have a weakness for familiar essays. I should try to write one. Hmm.
Planning to Read: Twice Upon a Marigold, by Jean Ferris. It's the sequel to Once Upon a Marigold, which is a funny book, so hopefully this will be too.
I can't decide if I think the title is cute or silly, but it's not as bad as the title to the sequel of I Know What You Did Last Summer, which is I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. That may have come all the way around bad and into good again.
Reviewing: Book Review: Sunshine
I like this book. I like the characters, both as characters and as people; I like the coffee shop, which deserves special mention for being awesome; and I very much like the worldbuilding.
There are a lot of good things to say about characterization in this book, so I’ll pick just one. The main character, Sunshine, and her mother love each other but don’t understand each other. It’s very strained—they don’t talk unless they have to—but her mother isn’t demonized for it, and it’s very well drawn.
Also: THE COFFEE SHOP. I want to eat there. I want to have a giant cinnamon roll! And handmade cherry tarts made with fresh cherries! And Death of Marat (which is berries covered by a fluffy white cake thing, and the best name ever for a dessert).
Finally, the worldbuilding. The world is a fractured version of our own—similar enough to have a Marat, but different because it has vampires and demons and, evidently, a recent World War III type thing called the Voodoo Wars.
One small flaw: none of the characters behave like they’ve been through a war. No one has relatives who died (except possibly Sunshine’s Dad’s family with whom she had no contact), no one talks about shortages during the war (which Sunshine would have noticed, given she works at a coffee shop, and which would have occurred given the level of infrastructure damage there seems to have been).
But that’s not very noticeable while reading the book, even for people like me who are way too involved with the setting. What is noticeable is the intense level of detail in this world. Much of it is very quotidian—for instance, there’s a whole genre of trashy books about the Others (vampires, demons, etc), which Sunshine discusses in loving detail.
A big part of the charm of Sunshine is Sunshine’s voice: very discursive, even chatty, laid-back and slangy. The slang is both extensive and intuitive, so it creates a vivid picture of a different world while remaining completely comprehensible.
I would be really pleased if McKinley wrote a sequel to this. The world is easily big enough, and it sounds like Sunshine’s going to have a life plenty exciting enough to support another book. And there’re so many more questions I want answered. What were the Voodoo Wars about, anyway? What makes Con such a special vampire? And what other recipes does Sunshine keep hidden in that coffee house?
How long does a post need to be before it gets an lj-cut, anyway?
