nineveh_uk

Not the book review I meant to write, but the fic I ended up writing instead.

The Sun on the Water by Nineveh_uk
Chapters: 1
Fandom: Sunshine - Robin McKinley
Rating: G, CNTW
Characters: Rae "Sunshine" Seddon, Constantine (Seddon)

Rae takes a trip back to the lake.

*

I bought Sunshine* years ago in Cambridge at one of the late lamented Galloway & Porter's big sales, read it then, and think I probably haven't for a decade. It felt like a good choice to take on holiday and I'm glad I did. It works for me because although it's a vampire novel it isn't really a horror novel, and vampire fan as I am, I am a wimp when it comes to horror of the gory sort. I'm much more into fear than horror, and it does fear very well.

The story concerns an early twenties-ish cafe baker who goes out to a local lake to get away from it all for an hour or so and finds herself kidnapped by vampires (how different from the home life of our own dear Ramblers Association), imprisoned in an abandoned house, and destined to be a vampire's dinner. Only the vampire is not so keen to go along with this particular script.

There isn't a vampire novel that doesn't have some vampire cliché, but in general I find this one pretty fresh. You can tell that this was originally written for adults rather than as YA, because the eponymous Sunshine is very much positioned as a young woman, social category full-blown adult rather than teenager. She's got a job, a flat, friends, is pretty content with her life these days, and it isn't a novel about being swept away from the mundane, but hanging on to it when disruption comes. The vampires are very effectively inhuman. They're creepy and inhuman and horribly compelling, and people perceive them as glamorous and mysterious (and then they die). I've read review comments about people being frustrated that it doesn't delve deeper into the worldbuilding, but the amount that is there is perfect for me. I don't want a Compleat World of Vampires and Eldritch Foes with Bonus Political Oeconomie detail. I want enough background for the story, and that is what it does. It does require a certain tolerance of ambiguity: I like that we don't know everything about the world, that the story has a very narrow focus and that although the central narrative has a satisfactory ending, the heroine doesn't solve all her personal mysteries, let alone how the vampire foe is going to be defeated long-term, but that it ends with a sense of future that is a life-like future, that the future will continue to unwind, but you can't know what it is. But I can see that the unanswered questions could reasonably be frustrating for some readers. I'm also a big fan of the casually lyrical narrative style. I think the final action sequence isn't as strong as it might be, and in fact is probably weakened by not taking the horror approach: it needs a bit more ludicrous vampire grandstanding, but that's a minor quibble.

*That cover is absolutely terrible. It's simultaneously a scene from the book and conveys absolutely the wrong idea of the book. Mine was this cover and I'm pretty sure that I picked it out of the pile because of that. Much creepier, but also, being the romance of the clapboard house, much creepier. I think the current cover also does the book a disservice in another way in that I realised while reading it that there is almost no physical description of most of the human characters, including the heroine, and all of them could be of any ethnicity, which feels like it works well in a vampire book where the ostensible sides are humans or Others and we don't even know the name of the heroine's country (OK, it's obviously the US, but in this AU world we don't know that it is called the US. Manchester does exist, however. It has a vampire problem.)

Sometimes you have what seems like a fun idea for a fic, and then you write the full fic and you realise that it was a fun idea, but it's ability to sustain an actual fic is somewhat limited. Trope subversion is not inherently an interesting subject. So I gave up on the long version and wrote the short one instead.

In which Yuri P is drugged with sex-pollen at a competition and has only one thing on his mind...

Sabotage ( Read more... )

Also on AO3

Again at AO3 as of minor interest in search of a specialist audience: Wilful and Unfemininely Determined.

I thank whoever it was who wrote an article pointing out that Daddy Long-Legs should be read at least as much as a Bildungsroman as a romance, which combined with my own conviction of it as a comedy of manners makes it 1000% less creepy. I much prefer Jervis Pendleton as a relatively young man who has got massively out of his depth than the idea that he is totally and inherently creepy. OK, there is an unavoidable element of creep-factor given the scenario, but really, Judy runs rings around him.

That said, I still greatly admire the author of this blog post, "A Highly Scientific Analysis Of Daddy-Long-Legs Adaptations". Four versions, rated by "fidelity", "awesomeness of Judy", "creepiness", and "overall watchability" with the sad conclusion Science has proven that the completely unwatchable Korean version is the winner by virtue of not having a negative score. It’s a sad day when the best adaptation of something is the one which in no way resembles the original plot. In the midst of one of my "must read all the things" new fandom discoveries I tracked down on the internet the playtext of the first DLL adaptation, by Jean Webster herself. It was very much of the drawing-room comedy variety. I fear that while it would do fine on the first three categories, it would suffer badly on watchability through being massively, Edwardianly, dull.

*Film really is a challenge for a novel that depends for its charm on its strong narrative voice.

I cannot say how much I do not want to read Ankh-Morport Vimes/Vetinari bakery!AU. A Twilight/Pratchett crossover in which Eclipse* Bella Swann is sent to Lady Margolotta for therapy, on the other hand, is an idea I can get behind.

Nineveh’s top tip to fanfic writers everywhere. Are you thinking about using the word “wanton” in your fic?

Don’t.

*The one with the moping.

ETA: Breach of the Statute of Secrecy in the Daily Telegraph: I used dark arts to destoy careers of Blair ministers, admits Brown aide