I read this new book in one long gulp on the plane from the US to Argentina this week. The book is very well written, and begins with the promise of a fully fleshed world that is similar to ours, and a magic that is hidden and unknown. The kind of book I like, after all. So it's good, if you like that sort of thing. However, (and this is purely a matter of personal preference), I find that I've lost my appetite for fantasy that spells everything out in hackneyed phrases and "known" D&D derived concepts. That tendency takes fantasy and grounds it in bureaucratic monotony and known quantities. Think, for example, if Tolkien had just said that Galadriel "wore a glamour" (like a coat). How much less interesting a character she would be -- less mysterious, less magical. Same with George RR Martin, if he'd just said that beyond that wall were some were-wolves. How boring, and how easily "boxed" by his readers. Same thing with Susanna Clarke's masterful writing. No easily understood Fairie, and thus, a fragile, and beautifully mysterious quality of alien otherness. Anyway, I digress. Sunshine is a wonderfully written and well crafted novel, and far better than much of the current crop of YA fantasy. But I find the approach a little boring and unoriginal.
