What do You think about Sunshine (2004)?
I have the worst touch pad in the world on my computer, which just erased an entire review. So here's the short version:The plot: unfocused, slow. It has a few exciting hot spots, spaced widely apart. The end is anti-climatic and doesn't feel worth all the build up. I wasn't thrilled with all the time she spent world-building, which didn't seem to make sense for a standalone novel in which most of that information would never be used or heard from again.The characters: Sunshine herself was well-drawn. McKinley spent a lot of time detailing her thought processes and letting us get to know her. Her voice was consistent, her fears realistic, and her choices fairly reasonable. Her day-to-day life was very fleshed out, and one of the strongest pieces of the novel. However, other than the lead protagonist and to a certain extent her sort-of hero (who, really, was a strong-and-silent-type archetype with a better vocabulary than usual), the characters in this book were very vaguely sketched or barely outlined at all. They were mostly plot devices or evidence of our character's background and what an awesome chick she is to have the devotion of these people. I wasn't hugely thrilled with the amount of the Special Snowflake Female stuff we had going on here. I hate when authors make a novel centered on a female and then make sure every other woman in the book is duly inferior. (There's one possible exception to that in this one, but I think even she is shown to be lesser by her choice of loyalties and choice to lie to her best friend.) A corollary I find just as irritating is showing her Special Snowflake-ness by the amount of men around her who are overprotective and adore her (even if they don't want to date her) and will do anything for her. There was a bit of that here, too. McKinley kept her use of this mild (I reeeally appreciated that I got to the end of the book and had little idea of what the narrator looked like except that she was skinny-too much to hope that that one would be left out- and nor did I know what the other women looked like either). But there were several pinches too much of it all the same.And yet: The writing. McKinley is a great writer with a curious, thoughtful mind, and it shows all the way through. She's wonderful at producing an atmosphere and a rhythm that really gives you a sense of the world she's trying to convey, or the inside of the head she's trying to give you a peek into. Her many, many forays into describing the magic of the book, while distracting and, after awhile, a bit repetitive, were also interesting to read. You can tell she was just bursting to tell us her ideas about how the magic worked, and what it must feel like. She clearly took her time choosing her metaphors and making them appropriate for her character, and that really paid off. She really thought through her magic and wanted to explore the how and why and the experience... and managed to do it without taking away the mystery that makes reading about the mystical fun and even enthralling in the hands of the right writer.She also did a wonderful job of grounding her magic-infused, supernatural haunted story in the experience of the every day. Her heroine worked at a bakery, which involved long hours and not great pay, and we heard about every single time she had to change shifts, work extra hours or deal with complaining customers. We heard about her car troubles and the practicalities of making bread in August. This allowed McKinley to infuse magic in the way that magic works best- seeping up through the cracks of everyday life, when people reach for it on their breaks, or dream about it in their precious few hours of consciousness after work hours are over. Her repeated interest in exploring the workings of the magic and the supernatural beings in the novel ended up making it a bit too regular a part of the routine, which was another problem with how often she went on those digressions. But overall, placing this story within the structure of the mundane still worked very well.In the end, I appreciated the atmosphere, found one or two moments I connected with the character, and even felt a little sad when we whispered out at the end and I didn't know what was going to happen next. I would have read a sequel. Just goes to show you- even a half-done idea in the hands of a wonderful writer can be very much worth the time spent.
—Kelly
Lots of people seem to want RM to write a sequel to this. After one reread, what I truly demand is the cookbook. Perhaps wisely the author avoids too many details about the cooking/baking, which is maybe wise, readers with different baking skills might find it obvious or ludicrous or something, but the references are all so tempting. I really want to know the secret for Bitter Chocolate death! And I am half-seriously thinking of compiling a list of everything Rae bakes during this book just for inspiration. But for the list of fictional books I would love to read ( nod to another McKinley book) would be Rae Seddon´s cookbooks.A few thoughts:- this book is a lot like Dragonhaven. I had spotted they were alike, but only now on rereading this how much they really are alike, maybe I should call them mentally the "tough" McKinley books, they are very different in tone from the other dreamier, gentler of her novels. They are also non-dog books which is a bit of a pity, I love her fictional dogs. Back to comparing, both books are first person narratives, set in very different alternate worlds and where lots of exposition about that world is necessary. Exposition which must came from a 1st person PoV which can be a bit jarring. I think the author does it well, but not sure that can be done seamlessly, not for worlds sufficiently different and books relatively short, and not all readers will like it (I do). On both Dragonhaven and Sunshine the narrators are not *likable* or well integrated, or perhaps even neurotypical ( Jake. I think there are hints enough on Dragonhaven) narrators. I loved both books, but I can see where that would bother a lot of people specially if they need characters to be likable to like them (I will admit I do not have to, though not sure I can explain why). And on both books, major stuff happens within the rules of its universe that changes how the rules thought to be true. - Has anybody found that the first part of this book feels like a novella and (almost)complete on its own? Enough exposition of the rules of the universe, action, personal discoveries, a conclusion ( and a wonderful "last" line which just makes me go wow). Without any sort of evidence at all it feels to me like the novel grew out of a novella type story ( the first part). I do not mean that in a padded-extraneous-story way, but in a good way, that the interesting things sometimes are what is after the story. And this relates to perhaps the need, or not, for a sequel which I was just getting into:- There are many things about that universe we do not know about and which I want to know - more on Con and his difference take on vampirism, more on the goddess of pain, more on Mel, more on the Blaises. But it ends well, without cliffhangers, and with a feeling that this story is always about there being more story. Do we really need a sequel? I don´t know. I would read it absolutely and love finding out more about that universe, but I am not sure if it truly is required.- this is a crazy, but the one novel Sunshine really reminded me of was The Lord of the Rings particularly The Fellowship, the sense of ominous evil threatening, though without any clear plan of how it could be defeated. Or not so crazy, but also reminded me a bit of Barbara Hambly´s great ( horrific and creepy and sort of anti vampire fandom) Those who Hunt the Night, that vampires are *horror*.- now for something spoilerific, rereading I was impressed how well written and planned and plotted it all was. Except for one small detail, I can not understand why Rae would suddenly see significance in the number of Mel´s live tattoos, when she tells us about it before without seeing anything on it. She is different than before, yes, but I do not understand it well enough. Maybe on a sequel, we find out more about Mel which makes sense of it.
—Hirondelle
When I picked up Sunshine for the first time and realized that Robin McKinley had written a vampire novel, I was almost horrified: it seemed a far cry from Damar and retold fairy tales, and vampire novels are certainly not usually my thing. But McKinley is easily one of my top ten favorite writers, so I sat down with it one night and got so sucked into it (pardon the pun) that I stayed up most of the night finishing it (which is a bigger deal than it used to be, with a toddler who gets up when he feels like it rather than when I do). On subsequent rereads, I've managed to avoid staying up all night, but it's been a real test of my willpower.Sunshine is set in an alternate universe, where there are vampires, demons, and weres as well as humans, those who survived the Voodoo Wars but are now threatened by the increase in the vampire population. Rae Seddon, a baker nicknamed "Sunshine" for her affinity for sunlight, has an unusual interest in the Others, but no real contact with them...until the night she's kidnapped by a group of vampires. Her fellow prisoner is also a vampire, and their joint captivity creates an uneasy alliance. Even after their escape, Sunshine and Con are still linked, and Sunshine (another of McKinley's typically strong, practical heroines) discovers more about her world, her past, and her own powers as she and Con work together to defeat the vampire who captured them.McKinley excels at creating richly detailed worlds, and she's done that again with Sunshine. The world is like ours in many respects (Sunshine describes something at one point as "half Quasimodo, half Borg"), but chillingly different in others -- in one memorable passage, Sunshine wonders about whether phoenixes exist: "I think the phoenix has at least a fifty-fifty chance of being true, because it's nasty. What this world doesn't have is the three-wishes, go-to-the-ball-and-meet-your-prince, happily-ever-after kind of magic. We have all the mangling and malevolent kinds. Who invented this system?" Con himself is Other: not just a human with long teeth, he is inhuman, which makes Sunshine's unwilling attraction to him particularly intriguing (and yet another of McKinley's variations on the "Beauty and the Beast" theme, which she makes even more apparent by having Sunshine retell the fairy tale to Con during their imprisonment).Altogether, Sunshine is an unusual outing for McKinley in its subject matter and world, but her wonderful writing, worldbuilding, and characterization are fully evident and as compelling as ever. Oh, and you might want to have a couple of good cinnamon rolls lying around, because believe me, you'll be hungry for them by the time you're done with the book (I wish McKinley had included Sunshine's recipe for those).
—Margaret
