Book Review

[kenjari]

Sunshine
by Robin McKinley

This vampire novel was surprisingly fresh and fascinating. The setting is more or less the modern world, but as it might be if things like demons, peris, were-creatures, magic use, and vampires were all real and had always been. The heroine, Sunshine, is a punky, offbeat baker at her family's coffeehouse. Because of her unprecedented survival of an encounter with vampires, Sunshine is thrown headlong into both her own magic-handling abilities and the world of the Others (non and part human supernatural beings). One of the strengths of the book is that Sunshine is able to be powerful and heroic while still being disturbed by and scared shitless of everything she's gotten herself into. In fact, all the characters are very well-written, especially for this genre. The other strength is that McKinley does not fall prey to the last couple of decades' fascination with vampires as sexy, angsty, goth anti-heroes. McKinley's vampires are largely monstrous, predatory, and inhuman. They are horrors, yet without being simplistic bogeymen or simple villains. At times, I think McKinley is even offering some subtle commentary on the sexy vampire trend.

Comments

[ashears.livejournal.com]

*LOVED* that book. sailormur loaned it to me last year, I read it at the beach last October.

Woot.

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

Yes!! I loved that the vampires were ugly!

I also loved the baking. "Of course my eschatology would involve three kinds of chocolate and heavy cream." Awwwww yeah :)

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Ah, the baking. That book is a major reason why I found myself in my kitchen at 8pm on a Sunday night grating orange peel for a double recipe of cranberry-orange bread.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

That book is making the rounds in my department this year. Isn't it awesome?

[lanapowers.livejournal.com]

I wasn't really fond of this book - she's written better ones. It was far too mary sue to me. I also liked that the vampire was more monstrous, but she still had an attraction to him, and so it did not completely escape the "mysterious vampire attraction" cliche. Also, the book tried to start with simple concepts and work its way up to the big ones (a recommended tactic in fantasy/scifi) but the leap between the everyday and the arcane was too jagged IMHO. I thought Sunshine's boyfriend was a much more interesting character that we didn't see enough of. (I think I may have wanted this book to be something it was not, but it didn't charm me into forgiving it for that...)

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

I also loved this book!