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Read Sunshine (2004)

Sunshine (2004)

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Rating
3.84 of 5 Votes: 5
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ISBN
0515138819 (ISBN13: 9780515138818)
Language
English
Publisher
jove

Sunshine (2004) - Plot & Excerpts

I've seen Robin McKinley accused of having only one plot: variations on "Beauty and the Beast." This kind of reductionism, of course, can be extended to just about any story. Some of us over a certain age even used to have test questions on this in Tenth Grade Literature: What is the plot of this book? A) Man vs. Man, B) Man vs. Nature, C) Man vs.Universe. Perhaps this one can be further reduced to Woman Gains Choice, and we first encounter it in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, written in the early 1800s, wherein a female makes the choice concerning her future life and doesn't have to pay the price for such temerity by promptly dying of consumption. What it means is that woman gains power over her own life, and it's a trope women (and men) have been exploring in various story forms such as "Beauty and the Beast."McKinley looks at this story form from several angles. Anyone who thinks her stories cookie cutter have not paid attention: The Blue Sword is probably the most conventional; Deerskin is not at all conventional. This story has to do with vampires.I've heard people talking about how sick they are of vampire stories, that they are stale, nothing new to be said, and of course vampires, like elves and dragons (and horses), have been tamed down by many writers into being very pretty forms of humans, pretty, powerful, but with very human (usually mapping heavily onto middle-teen adolescence) emotions.Well, McKinley teases apart the threads of this familiar tapestry and reweaves them into a very strange form.The story begins with our first person protagonist describing her pleasant but claustrophobic life as the baker for a roadside diner that is very popular in her small town. We gain the impression of ordinary folk of the type we recognize in our own lives, an ordinary diner, an ordinary small town. Exactly when the reader feels as closed in by all these cheery, well-intentioned ordinariness as does the protagonist, she takes off to be by herself to the lakeside, which, we are told, is not popular any more since the Voodoo Wars.The Voodoo Wars? We've had, so far, exactly one other hint that things are not quite as ordinary as they appear when the protagonist mentions that one of her very normal brothers wants to go into Other law. Well, 'other' is easily assumed to be on the side of the downtrodden, and on goes the story: Voodoo Wars catches the eye but the story still marches on a few paragraphs, and then, abruptly, while she's at the lakeside, the vampires come. This is page 12.I had to look back at that beginning to really appreciate the mastery of McKinley's story-telling skills. Twelve pages of ordinariness, and a cliff-hanger, after which she pauses to tell us that the worst of the Others are vampires. Okay... then this is our world, but with vampires. No, wait, there's just this tiny mention of demons. But the story flashes on, and the protagonist is taken by vampires to a disintegrating ballroom, forced to dress in an extravagant crimson gown, and shackled to the wall-within reach of another vampire. Who is also shackled to the wall. Then they leave, giggling.The story takes off like a rocket from there: we find out the protagonist's name after we find out about the power of names, we find out more about vampires, and the Voodoo Wars, and the protagonist's background. Boundaries are broken over and over, and the reader, along with the characters, has to struggle to redefine them. The ordinary roadside inn with its ordinary characters turns out to be an anchor of relative safety in an increasingly strange and dangerous world. This is not our world. It's even more threatening, more perilous, but there are ways to fight it. Each ones exacts its cost: there are no wish-fulfillment mega-powers gained just by suffering winsomely enough. Power has to be fought for, inwardly and outwardly, it rips apart lives and requires dispassionate remapping of one's universal landscape. And using power is painful, just as a real punch bruises the attacker as well as the victim.Along the way McKinley examines families, love, romance, sexual attraction, morality, ethics, deception, the social contract, eschatology, the perils of responsibility. Absolutely nothing is easy -- except, perhaps, the sharing of food.McKinley's vampire is not pretty, does not react with adolescent emotion; he is compelling, and a fascinating study in how human can become alien, yet retain a conflicted nexus of human traits. The ending is not neatly tied off, but is breathtaking with possibility. I sure hope she returns to this world. There is so much more to explore and to say -- and I really want to know more about the spinster landlady, who was my favorite character of all.

Thinking is bad for you. The heroine of this novel, Rae Blaise or Sunshine, as she is better known, finds this out the hard way after she drives out to the lake to have a think and avoid arguing with her mum. Because while there, she is kidnapped by a group of vampires, dressed in blood red silk and chained in a room with another vampire, Constantine. But clearly, Sunshine is a bright girl (I am still unsure exactly how old she is supposed to be, early twenties, I'd guess) and learns her lesson quickly and pretty much stops thinking from then on. At least enough for her latent powers to reveal themselves and take over her logical processes.I am doing this all wrong, aren't I? Because, actually, I loved this book. I couldn't put it down. And even the fact that listening to Sunshine is like talking to someone with a severe case of ADD because she keeps diverting and sidetracking until you lose all sense of what she was talking about to begin with and the fact that the book was like the worst kind of tease, sucking you in, turning you on and dumping you with barely a hint of a resolution, no answers to most of the questions and no sequel in sight wouldn't put me off. I liked Sunshine. Despite her ADD and obsession with baking (I hate cooking with a passion). She felt real. She was sometimes snarky, sometimes frustrating, sometimes puzzling but always interesting and complex and believable as a character. I've never read any McKinley before but I new fairy tale retellings were usually her thing but that this wasn't quite her usual thing, being a gritty and dark urban tale about vampires. Yet I am not so sure. This is a dark vampire tale but with a healthy dose of fairy (tale) dust sprinkled all over it, I think, and some sunshine. It is a Beauty and the Beast story, which Sunshine tells to Constantine during their confinement and which, I hear, McKinley is a teeny bit obsessed with but it is not really a romance (damn it!).Yes, Constantine is definitely the Beast of this piece. He is ugly and alien and he smells. No sparklingly brooding underwear models here. No sighing over anybody's eyes and beautiful chests. Yet Sunshine, and I along with her, grows to love him despite herself and the "resolution" to their relationship at the end, while it is incredibly frustrating in its unclarity, is also incredibly sweet (I did tell you this was a fairy tale, right?).But back to the unclarity (and the biggest fattest BUT of this book). Questions. Questions, questions everywhere. Where did Sunshine's father and the entire Blaise family disappear to? What are the "bad spots"? Why does Sunshine's mum avoid her all the time and why did she leave her father? What precipitated the Voodoo Wars? Has the presense of supernatural beasties always been the reality of this world or have they just crawled out of the woodwork at some point? What is the Goddess of Pain? What is Mel? And so on and so forth. Answers are not forthcoming. You know that scene in the middle where naked Sunshine lands on equally naked Constantine but, while he initially appears into this, he soon comes to his senses and won't put out and Sunshine is all frustrated with engorged labia and parts to match. Well, I swear McKinley put this in just to illustrate graphically how she was going to leave her readers at the end of this book. Coitus interruptus, are you bloody kidding me? I need the other two books (at least) in this series, which Mckinley is not writing. I was going to take a star off for that but then, I know for a fact that I am now going to go read every single other book that McKinley has ever written and come back to this one over and over looking for that something that I have possibly missed but really just to spend some time with Con and Sunshine again, even if they are not doing anything new and Sunshine is mainly blathering on about her cinnamon rolls as big as her head. And if that doesn't make a book five star worthy, I don't know what does.

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

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