Tassels Are Bad

Abandon


Meg Cabot

2 Stars

Seventeen-year-old Pierce knows what happens to us when we die. That's how she met John Hayden, the mysterious stranger who's made returning to normal life - or at least life as Pierce knew it before the accident - next to impossible. Though she thought she escaped him - starting a new school in a whole new place - it turns out she was wrong. He finds her. What does John want from her? Pierce thinks she knows... just like she knows he's no guardian angel, and his dark world isn't exactly heaven. But she can't stay away from him, either, especially since he's always there when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most. But if she lets herself fall any further, she might find herself back in the place she fears the most. And when Pierce discovers the shocking truth, that's exactly where John sweeps her: The Underworld.

I had such high expectations for this book, but I was totally disappointed. I'd read only one of Meg Cabot's books before, but it was excellent - the protagonist was strong and funny, the plot was interesting, and the characters were realistic and charming. And on top of that, I am a huge Greek mythology lover. So I was excited - a new retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth? Bring it on. However, the protagonist in Abandon, Pierce, annoyed me from the start. She spends 2/3 of the book referring to "the accident" and "the incident" without telling us what happened, and instead of creating suspense, this technique just results in irritation. I found myself wishing she would get on with it and tell an actual story already. And nothing actually happens until the last 1/3 of the book - and even then, there aren't many answers, just questions. The whole book felt like nothing but a setup for the future books in the series - one big long prologue to the story.

The love interest, John Hayden, was a stereotype. He's tall, dark, handsome, possibly unbalanced, and a flat character. He basically shows up in Pierce's life whenever she needs him, causes some mayhem, and then disappears. They don't seem to have much chemistry and there isn't much relationship-building, but all the same, there's the typical scene where "his lips came down over mine" and suddenly she's so in love and can't live without him, etc.

However, the history of Isla Huesos and the tradition of Coffin Night were intriguing to learn about, and I do give the book props for characters who were diverse in race, class, and background. The ties to Greek mythology were also interesting when they appeared - the little things, like Pierce's father being powerful like Zeus, and Pierce's mother caring for the environment like Demeter.

I think that my overall impression of this book is that it had a lot of potential, but never lived up to it. Possibly the most I got out of it is the idea that tasseled shoes are very, very bad. While I didn't like Abandon much, I do have hopes that the sequel, Underworld, will be more satisfying.

Cinnamon Rolls and Vampires and Sunlight and Magic...

Sunshine

Robin McKinley

2 Stars

Rae, nicknamed Sunshine by her stepfather, is the baker at her family's coffeehouse. She's happy getting up at 4 am to make cinnamon rolls for the breakfast rush, and dealing with people and food all day. But one evening she needed somewhere she could be alone for a little while, and there hadn't been any trouble out at the lake for years. She never thought of vampires. Until they found her. (quoted from Robin McKinley's website)

First Sentence:
"It was a dumb thing to do but it wasn't that dumb."

I wanted so badly to love this book. McKinley's fantasy The Hero and the Crown is one of the novels that I keep rereading over and over because it's so dear to me. However, Sunshine just didn't impress me much, despite its many excellent reviews. Still, there are some things that I did like about it. The world created here is an odd mix of the real world we live in and the supernatural. It puts a new spin on common concepts like vampirism and magic; government and vampires and technology and spells and baking and love and secrets are all mashed together. There is a post-apocalyptic feel to it, as the conflicts with the 'Others' have left the inhabitants of this world wary. And yet, life still proceeds as usual, which is something that I found to be rather intriguing. The second thing that I liked about Sunshine was the humor, which was quite witty. I also thought the way the vampires were written was very artful, because they seemed so inhuman and far away from the normal people, and yet so morbidly fascinating. And the scenes where Sunshine bakes and works at the coffeehouse were warm and enchanting - they made me want to get up and make some cinnamon rolls myself.

Sadly, the negatives in this book outweigh the positives. The novel was very confusing at many points; I felt like there was just such an overload of information that it was difficult to focus on the actual story and characters. Yes, the world is intricate and complex, but it's not interesting to learn about it when all those facts are just dumped on you in these long, dense passages. The plot, which is actually quite good, is overshadowed by all the exposition. The protagonist, Rae Seddon (aka Sunshine), is an intriguing person, but I really don't think that 1st-person narration was the best choice for the telling of this story. Sunshine frequently segues into extensive inner monologues (those information dumps I was talking about earlier) and that just makes the book unnecesarily muddled and dull. There are times when Sunshine begins to do something, then drifts off into a long speech about something or the other, and then two pages after she begins the action she continues it, leaving me going, "Wait, what exactly was going on before she started ruminating on and on?" I also felt that McKinley's descriptions were confusing and unclear a lot of the time, and I just couldn't get a good grip on what was happening, where, why, etc. (this is especially true when Sunshine is tracking vampires). I think that some of the characters could have been more fleshed-out, especially Mel and Con, who are closely linked to Sunshine and strongly affect her life. There's just so much left unresolved about them, and while it can be good to have ambiguity in a novel, this is too much mystery for me to relate to them or care about them.

Overall, I felt that this novel could have been a lot better. I get the sense that with more editing and polishing, Sunshine could have been a truly amazing book.