Book Review

Book: Sunlight and Shadow by Cameron Dokey

It's no secret that my favorite opera is Mozart's Die Zauberflote. It's a great gateway opera for those of you who would like to try an opera to see if you like it. Anyway, I picked up Sunlight and Shadow because it was part of the Once Upon a Time series without even knowing it was based on The Magic Flute. I was not disappointed.

One of the things I love about Donna Jo Napoli's books is how much story she can pack in just a few pages. This book was similar, it runs just under 200 pages and packs a massive story in that short span. Giving me another great lesson in succinct story-telling (although there were plenty of places where the story could have been expanded, making it richer).

The story is written in first-person point-of-view, from four or five different characters perspectives. This always annoys me. I have yet to read a book that can pull it off. It would take me several sentences each chapter to figure out who was narrating, so I had to do quite a bit of re-reading. Even more annoying was when she shifted narrators in mid-chapter and I had read two pages before realizing it. Ugh.

Another drawback of writing in a first-person POV is the inclination to tell the story rather than show it. The first two chapters were pretty boring because I was just being handed all this information and it annoyed me. Finally in the third chapter it began to feel like a story and I happily read the rest of the tale.

The only other thing that pulled me out of the story was the formulaic way that the female and male protaganists fell in love. I realize it's a fairy tale, but I still felt like it should have felt more sincere. Instead Mina (female protag) seemed to be using her "love" for Tern (male protag) to get back at her father. That doesn't seem like love to me.

Don't let all of my negative comments turn you away from this book, it was a good fast read that I enjoyed. There were so many unique images and a sort of mythology that played throughout that made it interesting. There were surprises set side-by-side the predictable, so it kept me guessing. I also appreciated the imagery used to describe night and day, a constant theme in the story. After reading this book I'm excited to read the other books in the Once Upon a Time series.

Happy reading!