Sunlight and Shadow By Cameron Dokey   Release Date: Buy it Today! Simon Pulse Ratings Action Romance Characters Overall Purchase on Amazon. Purchase at Powell’s. Find independent bookstores near you.

Mina is the daughter of Sarastro, Mage of the Day, and Pamina, the Queen of the Night. With her birth came a destiny that her marriage would change the balance of power between day and night, and her parents have been locked in a struggle to control this change ever since. Raised by her mother, she is to go to her father on her sixteenth birthday, but when her father takes her to marry her off, her mother sends a prince to find her in exchange for marrying Mina. Mina must free herself, and fight to choose her own love in a set of deadly trials that will take her into the fires of Hell.

Based on Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Sunlight and Shadows gives more depth to the characters and creates far stronger females than the opera originally portrayed. The tale is weaved by Dokey with the intention of elaborating on the story, and she gives an interesting author’s note at the end about her own love of the opera.

This book is in the same series as Scarlet Moon, the “Once Upon a Time” series. Dokey has written two other book in the series, The Storyteller’s Daughter and Beauty Sleep . Like Scarlet Moon , the book is relatively short, but it tells a full tale. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the opera, so I have trouble recounting how accurate the tale is. I do know that the characters of the original opera were more two dimensional, and the villain had few motivations. As Dokey points out, the villain’s only real motivation was that he was a Moor, and as Shakespeare taught us, that’s not a very accepted racial group.

My biggest complaint with this book was the narration style. Dokey tries to give us a “story-teller,” but divides up this task between five different characters, all speaking in a first-person. At the beginning of the book, each of this first person narrators are divided up by chapter, but towards the end they switch in the middle of a scene, with only an extra blank line to signal the change. This confused me, as suddenly something would be said that I knew the character I thought was narrating couldn’t know, but then I would realize that it had switched POVs on me. I think it would have done much better to just keep a distant narrator or switch to third person limited.

I enjoyed the characters a great deal in this book: no one was portrayed as only good or evil, each had their motivations, and the story was resolved in a satisfying conclusion. Even though I did not like the use of five first person POVs, it did mean that the characters could give more detail about their lives. My complaint isn’t that there are too many narrators, but that the author does not do a good job of distinguishing who is narrating at each point in the story. The romances went a little fast, but given that it’s a short book, I don’t find too much fault with it. This book was just barely longer than Scarlet Moon, at one hundred eighty-four pages.

Another thing I enjoyed about this book after reading Tam Lin is that the reader did not need to know the original opera in order to enjoy this book. The story was all there, and I never felt like I was missing something.

Ratings Reasons:
Action 3 – Pretty average action-wise, the decent into hell is well-written, but for the most part, the action isn’t a big part of the story.

Romance 4 – Cute, enjoyable, but a little fast. The characters all seem to be on a quest for true love, and they each find it. The reader wants them to find their love, so I think I was more willing to overlook the quickness.

Characters 4 – Motivated and detailed, I enjoyed the elaboration that the author gave to the characters. The characters seemed to be acting in ways that were consistent with what we are given in the original opera.

Overall 3 1/2 – This book was very enjoyable, and I would certainly recommend it to others. I’m not sure how often I will be rereading the book, but it certainly makes me want to watch the movie of the opera.

Extras:
Mozart wrote The Magic Flute, and it premiered in Venice in 1791, and people around the world are still enjoying the story. Check out a summary of the original opera on Wikipedia.

Ingmar Bergman created a stunning film adaptation of the opera in 1975, adding in the relationship between Sarastro and Pamina. Dokey recommends watching this version. There is also a new version, made in 2006, that retells the story in a World War I setting and is directed by Kenneth Branagh.

My introduction to the story was via “Mozart’s Magic Fantasy: A Journey Through ‘The Magic Flute’,” part of the Classical Kids series of audio tapes (Now re-released on cd). I used to love this story as a child, along with “Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery”. Both of these stories have stuck with me since my childhood.

Cameron Dokey has written several more books for teens. The other books in the Once Upon a Time series are: Beauty Sleep (Sleeping Beauty), Golden (Rapunzel), Before Midnight (Cinderella), and The Storyteller’s Daughter (Arabian Nights). Another book by the author is How Not to Spend Your Senior Year, which I’ve read an enjoyed. I also read Beauty Sleep which I did not enjoy as much as Sunlight and Shadow , the story went in a somewhat odd direction. It wasn’t a bad book, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I was hoping.

Parents:
10+ This will be an enjoyable book for anyone who enjoys fairytale retellings or are fans of The Magic Flute . This book might also be a good way to get your reader into opera, as they will be inclined to watch the movie or attend the opera after reading this.

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