Sunrise Hotel is my first encounter with the FWTD setting and I'm really not sure about it yet. The story, as described above, involves a teenage runaway living in The City with other kids who spend their time trying to find money for shelter, food, drugs and alcohol. The main character, a sixteen year old named Tina, panhandles, steals and prostitutes herself to get what she wants and needs. The main plot involves her investigating the disappearance of her friend but most of the book focuses on how pathetic her life is and her daily grind to get by. There is a lot of word count devoted to her standing in lines at food shelters, panhandling, arguing with her roommates, getting drunk or high, having sex to pay the bills or get what she wants and so on. I understand that this is all to build up to her change in character toward the end, deciding whether or not she really is the Blade Queen and what she wants from her life, but there was way too much time spent spinning the tires instead of moving the story forward. As a character I found her increasingly unlikable as the story went on. She does redeem herself at points, but as a whole she is entirely forgettable.

There are some good setting elements here, such as the gangs when they are briefly mentioned, but far too much time is spent on Tina and not enough on the story, the setting or her "mission".