Sunlight and Shadow by Cameron Dokey
This is based on the opera The Magic Flute which I’m not familiar with.
Mina (Pamina) is the daughter of the Queen of the Night and the Mage of the Day. Though her parents live in the same palace, it’s strictly divided, and Mina has never met her father, though she’s required to marry the man of his choosing when she turns 16. Her father, though, abducts her early, and Mina joins forces with Gayna, a young woman raised by the mage and in love with the man selected to be Mina’s husband, to escape, while Mina’s friend, Lapin, sets out to rescue her, soon joined by a prince.
The story has a lot of mythic and narrative elements I love, but unfortunately, the book…isn’t that good. It’s split between five first person narratives, and none of the voices are very distinct. There’s also no clear identifier for narrative switches, so it sometimes takes a paragraph to figure out whose head you’re in now, and the book simply isn‘t long enough to fully carry both the plot and five POV characters.
The narrative voice is also frequently annoying, with a cloying “look at how clever and witty I am” approach at many times. About halfway through, I realized that Dokey also wrote The Storyteller’s Daughter, which had the same problem for me.
Does anyone know of any good (and available to me) versions of The Magic Flute? Because, while the book didn’t impress me much, I am very curious about the story now.
Mina (Pamina) is the daughter of the Queen of the Night and the Mage of the Day. Though her parents live in the same palace, it’s strictly divided, and Mina has never met her father, though she’s required to marry the man of his choosing when she turns 16. Her father, though, abducts her early, and Mina joins forces with Gayna, a young woman raised by the mage and in love with the man selected to be Mina’s husband, to escape, while Mina’s friend, Lapin, sets out to rescue her, soon joined by a prince.
The story has a lot of mythic and narrative elements I love, but unfortunately, the book…isn’t that good. It’s split between five first person narratives, and none of the voices are very distinct. There’s also no clear identifier for narrative switches, so it sometimes takes a paragraph to figure out whose head you’re in now, and the book simply isn‘t long enough to fully carry both the plot and five POV characters.
The narrative voice is also frequently annoying, with a cloying “look at how clever and witty I am” approach at many times. About halfway through, I realized that Dokey also wrote The Storyteller’s Daughter, which had the same problem for me.
Does anyone know of any good (and available to me) versions of The Magic Flute? Because, while the book didn’t impress me much, I am very curious about the story now.