Sunshine [Paperback]

Rae Seddon, nicknamed 'Sunshine' is as normal a girl as you'll ever see. She works at her stepfather's coffee shop making cinnamon rolls; she has her own house, a nice old landlady, a boyfriend named Mel and a very annoying mother. Seems like your typical twenty-something woman, right? Wrong. After a particularly tiring day, Rae, wanting to escape from her life a bit, drives over to 'the lake'. There, she is captured by a band of vampires and offered as food to yet another one... the mysterious Constantine, who, as she soon discovers is also a prisoner. Fearing for her life, Sunshine discovers a whole new side of herself. With that she makes a strange friend, and attracts the wrath of the evil master vampire, `Bo', who sent his goons out to capture her. She has to fight him, with the uneasy help of Constantine, if she is ever to regain her old life back.

I have mixed feelings about this one. I know a good piece of literature when I see it. And "Sunshine" is superb, a truly well written book, a masterpiece of its genre. Ms McKinley idealized a world and described it with such vivid detail we can actually imagine ourselves living in it. Sunshine is a believable character. Even Constantine, as different as he might be from most of the vampires that appear in fiction today, is believable. This book also has an amazing character development, not to mention a story that while not original in its essence, is told in a very peculiar and interesting manner.

That said, I couldn't get into it as well as I would like. It took me almost a week to finish it. I'd say the first part (the book is divided in four) is not very appealing; this is probably the book's only weakness, as the first chapters are very important; if these chapters fail to capture the reader's attention, he or she might never pick up the book again. I thought the first part of this book, up until the scene of the lake very boring and too descriptive. Don't get me wrong; when the action takes place in a parallel world, you have to do some description... just try not to spend too much time on cinnamon rolls. Still, after those first few boring pages the book was fantastic. A little too descriptive at times, but fantastic nonetheless. I can agree wholeheartedly with the praise on the cover that says that "Sunshine" is 'Pretty much perfect'. A worthy read, fundamental for lovers of contemporary fantasy.

...and it made me look for more of her books. (I was SO disappointed to find that most of them were in the children's section -- until I started reading them.) As I'm interested in vampire literature, I actually took a risk and bought Sunshine instead of trying the library first: no regrets on the uncharacteristic extravagance. It doesn't follow the usual traits of the genre in lacking the pseudo-Victorian melodrama, the almost overblown and harrowing sense of angst (one often feels that the authors were writing their works by candlelight dressed all in Gothic black) that the main characters undergo, and the (excessive) focus on the erotic thrill of involvement with The Undead, etc. Instead the book is redolent of baking and... well, sunshine. It is not without violence -- after all, it is a book which involves vampires and other creatures -- but it doesn't glory in the blood and guts. And it doesn't rely on them, which is an achievement in this sort of book. I don't even consider it an extravagance anymore because I will read it again and again, keep it in my collection of books, jealously guard it against dilatory borrowers, and buy a new copy when it falls apart. I'm half-hoping that McKinley will write more about Rae or Con, but I'm almost afraid that it might be too much of a good thing.

I've been a fan of Robin McKinley since I read her earlier books, a few years back. I was really looking forward to this book, especially as it's been a while since her last book was published - and this book was recommended by Neil Gaiman - I wasn't disappointed.

Sunshine is the baker at her family coffeehouse and an ordinary person in a world that is much like our own, apart the magic, and the fall-out from the Wars between the humans and the Others - vampires, demons, and the like. But a decision not to join her family for a night watching films, instead having some solitude at the lake nearby her home town has consequences when she is captured by vampires, and forced to accept that she is not as ordinary as she would like to be. For one thing, no normal person who help another vampire to escape...

People have compared the book to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or the Anita Blake books. There are some similarities to BTVS, especially when Sunshine accepts that she is not an ordinary person, but I feel the comparison with Anita Blake is completely wrong - Sunshine doesn't want her role as a fighter against the "dark forces" of the Others, unlike Anita Blake.

In some ways, this is a version of the story of Beauty and the Beast, and Robin McKinley has created a truly believeable, real, reluctant heroine and a world that seems very real.

There are quite a few things left unresolved at the end of the book - I really hope Robin McKinley writes a sequel!