A book rant, re: McKinley's 'Sunshine'

[sihaya09]

So. I have been trying to get through Sunshine by Robin McKinley for what seems like millenia. It is a book that for all intents and purposes, I should like. It's got a sort of AU-world, it's got vampires and supernatural creatures, and it's got a protagonist that I started off really liking. More than one review has favorably compared it to

Comments

[reedrover]

At times, reading this book is like trying to read in an alien language where only half the words are translated.Yup

[sihaya09]

You have just confirmed my suspicion that I should run screaming from the rest of her body of work. I mean, I like monologues, in moderation, but damn, lady. Sunshine's perma-monologues read like my angsty 15 year old diary.

[reedrover]

The only two that are possible "sellers" of her work to people who require action rather than meandering around mental spaces are The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword. They aren't nearly as monologue-heavy, and they have better supporting characters. This is a duology set 500 years apart about two girls (coming of age, finding magic, finding their strengths, and finding that love is hard). However, if you don't like vague descriptions where you have to fill in the holes, and you like sharp edges to the scenery, I still don't recommend them to you.

[uberrod]

Last time I read anything by her was at least 20-30 years ago, so I can't remember if the rest of her stuff is as bad as you describe. I can't even remember the name of the book. I might have to dig it up.

As a side note I always found Andre Norton very hard to read. Her books really don't make much sense to me and I've read several of them. I always get totally lost and have no clue what's going on.

There have been only a few books that I just quit. One was the Crystal Shard, some sort of D&D kind of story. The writing was so bad that I couldn't go on. That may have been R.A. Salvatore.

[musicwolf]

It does get better? Not sure if that's a selling point since you have to suffer to get to action. Plus, without giving it away, I'm fairly sure you have an inkling about how it'll end in typical Mary-Sue fashion.

[tamnonlinear]

As a warning, if you haven't finished it yet- while I like McKinley in general and Sunshine in specifics, even I find her endings irritating. She has a terrible habit of ending her books with scenes that are very vaguely otherworldly and symbolic and totally goddamn vague. I often have little idea what the hell actually happened. It's like reading someone else's dream journal, when half of it is about things that people just sort of know and linearity is discarded and so forth. Fairly consistently the weakest parts of her books, and if you've been annoyed so far, unlikely to provide the closure you are hoping for.