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

[sihayadesigns]

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 Buffy.

I am now on page 212. It seems that I can't read more than 10 pages or so of this book at a sitting without getting bored or falling asleep.

The thing is, it's just not going anywhere. The first section of the book is plot-oriented. It nicely gets us acquainted with Sunshine/Raven/Rae, and despite having the Mary-Sue-i-est of all possible Mary Sue names, she seems to have a non-Sue-y personality, so fine. There's also a good chunk of the book's opening section that introduces us to the main vampire character, and I love the way that vampires in this world are actually more alien and scary and unsexy than the romantic badboys we've come to know in pop culture.

But then... nothing happens. Said vampire disappears for the length of a bible while Sunshine alternately processes and avoids processing the fallout from her vampire kidnapping. Some of this processing (and lack thereof) is absolutely legit and realistic, but a whole lot more of it is needlessly repetitive bullshit, too.

Part of my irritation is how Sunshine shuts everyone out who cares for her. She talks a lot about her mom, but so far, they have not yet had one single solitary conversation. She repeatedly talks about how the main thing she likes about her longtime boyfriend, Mel, is that they don't talk about their feelings, and haven't since long before she had her run-in with vampires. It's a cardboard relationship, flimsy and utterly unrealistic, and we're supposed to think it's so deep that they have a ~~mysterious unspoken bond~~ instead of recognizing it for the shitty writing that it is. Mel is basically just there-- she drops us some interesting hints as to his background, but overall, all we know about him are a string of facts that don't necessarily connect any dots in their relationship, or in how he relates to the narrative. It's just... so fucking lazy. And it sets the tone for how Sunshine interacts with more or less everyone else around her.

Overall, it seems that we're meant to find Sunshine's secretive nature and increasingly bitter stoicism ~~meaningful~~, but considering she was that way (for no truly discernible reason) before she was kidnapped by vampires, it just reads as stagnant and needlessly self-indulgent instead of character development. Halfway through the book, I can barely stand her, because she's become so self-involved that she's turning down and pointedly avoiding help just because. Sunshine has brief moments of lucidity about her motivations (shorthand: part PTSD, part guilt that she helped a vampire, all of whom are supposed to be evil), but those windows of clarity are largely overwhelmed by her contradictory and often counterproductive behavior, which seem to only exist to gum up any and all of the plot's forward momentum like a vat of molasses.

And the DIALOGUE. Ugh, it's atrocious. Here's McKinley's pattern for the rare bits of dialogue in the book:

Sunshine & other person start talking for about 1/2 a page. Sunshine then has an internal monologue for six or seven pages, often going off on tangents that are completely unrelated. They then pick up the conversation again and I have to thumb back to try to remember what the fuck they were talking about in the first place, because her monologues are SO DULL that I have invariably lain down the book and taken a nap.

Now, I'm not really a McKinley fan, so tell me-- are ALL her books this badly paced?

Also-- she clearly has put a lot of work into world-building this AU, but remains INFURIATINGLY VAGUE about key ideas and concepts. Now, I don't need everything spelled out for me-- sometimes when a narrator gets too exposition-eriffic, it sinks a story like the Titanic. That said? If a magical whatsit is integral to your plot, you damn well better be sure that your audience comprehends the basic facts and functions of your magical whatsit, even if you don't tell them all the particulars of how it works.

So... what the bleeding hell is a 'bad spot'? Even the name is stupidly vague. They seem to be important but invisible magical whatsit areas that everyone in this universe knows about. Sunshine herself comes in contact with them numerous times in plot-significant ways, but all we get as readers from context is a nebulous "place where humans don't go because it feels icky and also shit might have gone down there sometime ago during the wars maybe." Ugh, McKinley. You can natter on about desserts for fifty pages in between important conversations, but you can't spare a moment to spell out things that are crucial to the understanding of the world you're building? Really?

McKinley has this irritating habit of writing all around what she's talking about without ever describing its function or how it works, when both or either are crucial to your understanding of why she's talking about it in the first place. She also has a tendency to describe in-universe objects so vaguely that I've started to wonder if she's doing so because she assumes that the reader will do the work for her and just fill in the blanks with their mind (ie, the SOF's weird car-interior invisible armor stuff. What the fuck is that shit?). Basically what I am saying is that reading this book is like trying to read in an alien language where only half the words are translated, and even then only by Babelfish.

Case in point: I just finished reading a passage where Sunshine has a bad physical reaction to reading what I *think* was supposed to be analogous to an email (again, very hazy), and so she and her special vampire police friends are now driving in the direction she was "pointing" (the book's words) from reading said email (WHAT???) and then they run into a bad spot and have to turn around. I have no freaking idea what just happened or why it happened or how it happened or what it means. Again: LAZY WRITING.

And the SLANG. I don't have problems with in-universe slang. "Frak" and "gorram it" have wormed their way into my own vocab. I love in-universe slang. And in any AU-world, slang certainly makes sense. It's just that some of the slang in this book seems to have no counterpart in our language that I can find, in part because the context in which it's used varies so widely that I can't figure out what it's supposed to convey. For instance, "Spartan," in this book, bears no resemblance to our understanding of it (austere, frugal, brave). Instead, she uses it to mean either "cool" or alternatively "really bad/creepy," so I am left scratching my head as to what she means whenever she says it. There are also lots of references to Norse mythology, when nothing else in this world really relates to said mythology. Honestly, it sounds like she threw half of the slang in there as flash, in lieu of actual substance. IT'S SO FREAKING LAZY. There have been sentences I have read four or five times, even pondering diagramming the damn things, and they still doesn't make any blasted sense. It takes me right out of the story.

TL;DR: This book's editor was TERRIBLE.

Also, in a quick googlesearch, I found that McKinley is one of those authors who gets upset about fanfic, mostly because she thinks it's lazy (HAHAHAHA) to use someone else's world beyond a private workshop exercise. LADY, LOOK. You have several books based on myth and legend and fairytales that someone else wrote. In particular, 'Beauty and the Beast' can be traced back to its formative versions. PLEASE do put a lid on your hypocrisy. I don't know why opposition to fanfic is something that just IRKS me about particular writers-- I have written some, and enjoy reading it from time to time, but I agree that it should always be a labor-of-love, not-for-profit thing. But when an author-- particularly one who has basically written fanfic retellings herself and published it for profit (see also: Rice, Anne and her bible fanfic) starts getting all "NOT MY WORLD, NOSIREE," it's just stupid and sad.

I'm going to finish this book because I am one of those people that compulsively feels the need to finish books if I've passed the halfway point. I just needed to vent my spleen a little before I could pick up that damn book again, as if talking about my irritation will somehow lessen it. (I'll get back to you on that.)

Comments

[reedrover]

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

Yup!

I love your review. Really, I do. And part of the reason I love it is that you are a well-read, objective audience for literature who can articulate the issues with books that fall below your expectations. The other reason is because I love this book. And reading your review helps me place why I like it. I don't find the internal monologue dull, but rather the point of the exercise. The action is badly paced and poorly described, I agree. But that's ok. For me, it's the mental space that I actually enjoy... wallowing? ... as she examines and avoids and reexamines and rehashes. So yes, if you don't like that formula, then assuredly don't read ANYTHING else that she has written. Even her first Beauty and the Beast (she did two) has a lot of the mental meandering. And if you want to get so lost and annoyed that you do actually quit a book, try her Dragonhaven, and let us know to start a betting pool for when you start yelling in pain.

If there is any consolation (small as it is) you do get some action sequences at the end of this book that involve vampires again.

[sihaya09.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.