Sunshine - Robin McKinley

Sunshine is the nickname of Rae Seddon. When she was younger her mother left her father and she has been raised to be her mother's daughter. This becomes more apparent as we learn her father was a sorcerer from the famous Blaize family. Sunshine works in a bakery where she is famous for making her delicious cinnanmon rolls among other pastries and deserts. Everything changes though one day when she takes a drive up to the lake and doesn't hear the vampires coming (well you don't do you).

She wakes up surrounded by the creatures and is taken to a house where she is chained to the wall to be food for another vampire Constantine who is an enemy of their Masters. Con is trying to beat Bo by not eating Sunshinee. Sunshine on the other hand knows that no one escapes alive from vampires. All she has to help her is a small lock knife tucked in her bra.

During her incarcaration she remembers time spent with her grandmother, her father's mother, when she was young after her father left. She taught her transmuting, how she could change an object into another eg a feather into a leaf. Although she has been raised her mother's daughter, she still has the powers of her fathers line and she must be prepared so they do not suddenly express themselves. This could be her way out of her current situation although what to do about the trapped vampire as it doesn't seem fair to leave him behind. After all he didn't eat her, but it is sunshine outside.

I think this has had mixed reviews on the blogsphere, but I have to say I enjoyed it immensley. I loved Sunshine and reading her thought patterns which were at times a little jumbled as they would really be. I also really liked the supporting characters of Charlie, Con, Mel, Yolanda and Pat especially. There are so many vampire books around at the moment and this really does give you a different twist on the genre. My only random note was that was a random nearly sex scene in the middle of the book that seemed very out of place, but it did set up some conflict in the story which worked well. There could definitely be a sequel which I would most definitely rush out to get and read.

1 comments:

    I just read this last month. I was considering reviewing it on my own blog, but I thought that my opinion might be a bit skewed, as it was clearly written for a female audience. It wasn't bad; it was just sort of a chick-flick type book.

    McKinley's take on Vampiric plot devices were very inventive, though. They could sort of move through an alternate dimension, and they're tolerance for sun was a direct consequence of their own sadism.

    I wish more authors would go out on a limb to offer up variations on the classic vampire the way she did.

    If you enjoyed this book, I'd recommend The Hollows series by Kim Harrison. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Harrison) The characters and setting have much the same feel, and the strong female protagonists share a lot in common.