pablosolla

I have much to say concerning this book. First, a quick recap. Rae Seddon (AKA Sunshine) lives in an alternate reality where vampires, et. al. are alive and have mostly destroyed the world as we know it during the Voodoo Wars of approx. 10 years past. Sunshine wants only to live a simple existence of making cinnamon rolls for the patrons of her stepfather's coffeehouse. I know this because she basically says so on every page of the book. Unfortunately for her, she's about to get tangled up with a vampire named Constantine. Anyone out there ever seen the cartoon "Yu-Gi-Oh"? (Give me a break, I have kids). Here's how it goes. The characters are playing a to-the-death kind of card game. One player pulls out his Victory Card, which he states cannot possibly be beat ever in any way, shape, or form. To which, his opponent replies that it can't be beat EXCEPT FOR his combination I'm-a-winner card plus a you-suck card. Ha ha ha! (evil laughter). Then, the good guy takes a step back, wonders whatever he's going to do and eventually realizes that he can't possibly win now UNLESS he trades in three cards and ... you get the idea. Okay, so I'm sure you're wondering what Yu-Gi-Oh has to do with this book. That's exactly how Sunshine is as a narrator. She sets absolutely no precedence for the twists and turns this book takes. First, she gets taken by vampires. Great...she's for sure gonna die. Oh, BUT SURPRISE!! She just happens to be the daughter of a formidable sorcerer. Oh, did I not tell you there are sorcerers in this alternative universe? Oops, sorry about that. Oh, and by the way, she learned magic from spending summers with her grandmother. This book was ridiculously slow. In timeline, it should have happened over a period of weeks, not months. The sheer quantity of time the protagonist spends obsessing from page to page about whether or not she's gonna die is excruciating. And then, when the exciting (I use the term loosely) parts were happening, I had a really hard time decifering what was actually going on because the author tries to make everything a simile (which turns the smallest of expressions into a whole tangent). The whole Special Other Forces plotline could have evaporated entirely. This book would have been so much better told in third person instead of first. I just didn't care for Sunshine as a narrator at all.

2023-01-18 23:08