Sunshine Book Club Week 8

[accidentallymel]

And so we have reached the end! What are your thoughts? How did you like the book?

I think one of my favorite parts of Sunshine, besides, like, everything, is Rae's reaction to getting out alive - her shock and the choices she makes in the end there, when they survive after she was sure they couldn't are so in-character and perfect. I love the

Comments

[biggersandwich]

That whole ending sequence is amazing. The long set of her and Con running through nowhere with vampires turning up without warning is so recogniseable as a dream-space - haven't we all had a million dreams where we run through a place that isn't a real place? - that it just makes the intense physicality of destroying the vampires worse. And then Rae gets to have a human reaction to the whole thing and be in shock, real unpleasant shock, not either movie catatonia or something to be fixed with a blanket and a cup of tea alone. So well done.

Con passing as human is so weird. Especially because Rae keeps saying that it's his mannerisms that are selling it, because he still looks kind of unsettling (and how much do I love the fact that Sunshine's vampires are visually unappealing?), but he's previously been kind of bad at reading people, so I don't know how he's acting this well! It can't even be that he's using magic because Rae says he seems convincing to her, and I think at this point she's more or less immune, plus he wouldn't be bothering to turn it in her direction. Is this one aspect of human communication something he has practiced? Is it just that he has so much more incentive here?

It's odd: when I think about this book as a whole, I have absolutely no idea how it works. There are so many loose threads dangling at the end and some abrupt tonal shifts and Rae spends so much time in shock and unable to usefully contribute to the vampire destroying part of the plot (not that I don't adore her as a character and she gets to be active and well-rounded in a lot of ways, but at the end she's more of a weapon than a partner in getting through to Bo), but when you read it, it manifestly does work and is intensely compelling.

[accidentallymel]

I hadn't actually thought of that - Rae being more of a weapon than a partner in the destroying of Bo - but it's a really good parallel, because she doesn't really do a lot (she does some) to help them get there? Con mostly gets them there, and then Rae kills Bo while Con is busy dealing with Bo's gang (how badass is Con, though, to take on Bo's entire gang, basically? And win?).

And as for the loose ends - there are SO MANY, but at the end you still feel satisfied? I have no idea how that works and I would like to figure it out so that I can apply it to some of my other WIPs where I'm too lazy to figure out how to tie everything off neatly. *sighs*

I don't know how Con manages to pass himself off as human - what I like best about that though is the fact that Rae doesn't realize it at first, and sometimes I wonder why he's passing himself off as human, since clearly he's powerful enough that he should be able to just - get out, get away from SOF. Hmm. Oh, a thought - maybe the ability to pass is what Rae gave him, in all of their exchanges? And he just hasn't needed it until now?

[biggersandwich]

Yeah, I feel odd saying it because in general the whole feeling I get from Sunshine is NOT that she gets to be a weapon/plot device for destroying the enemy! And yet, there are some distinct similarities in the way that last scene plays out to media that really really annoys me for that reason! The Fifth Element for example, is also basically about getting the female lead into the right place at the right time, the difference is entirely in how much interiority both of them get. Which is an obvious sort of point, I guess, but it's a really neat trope subversion because Con is clearly doing so many things in the background to work out how to get them to this place, but we barely see them, or how he feels about them and it's all fine by me.

I'm not sure Con could have gotten away from SOF at that point? He'd been fairly thoroughly beaten up, even if he'd won, and clearly SOF does manage to kill vampires sometimes, even if they're not able to take them all out. On the other hand, at this point, it's also believeable that he stays because even if he could break out, they would immediately know he was a vampire and that would go badly for Rae. I don't think they'd buy her story a second time around, and consorting with vampires is certainly a major crime. Even if she convinced them that she was glamoured up, I suspect that just gives her no legal standing for not having her thoughts read because obviously she would want to help them catch the monster and anyway they're not her thoughts, right? I get the impression SOF can do an awful lot of sketchy stuff once vampires are for sure involved. But if they read her thoughts, they're definitely extra fucked because she has an awful lot of info about Con in there. Either way, it's probably pretty bad for Rae as I think there's an awful lot of spiriting someone away into protective custody SOF can do, especially with all the things we hear about vampires tracking people for years if they really want to.

It makes sense that she gave him the ability to pass though, either magically, or just because he's been paying a lot more attention to her as a human since the first time they met, even if he clearly decided that he wasn't going to go all out in pretending to be human when it's just the two of them. On the other hand, I wasn't sure if this was supposed to be one of the things that being his type of vampire gave him, and again, he just hasn't been using it because there's no percentage in pretending around Rae. Which could tie into our speculation above, because what if this is his line's preferred strategy for dealing with humans? It's not impossible, and there have to be some moments when it's easier than not doing so, even if it's a limited disguise and mostly you can basically just vanish.

[accidentallymel]

It's funny - I never, in all of the things I've wanted from/about Sunshine, I've never wanted to try and see the book from Con's perspective - I think that at least part of that are those dreams the Rae has, where she's a vampire and is thinking vampire thoughts. Like, I get that those are nightmares, and being a vampire might not be like that? But at the same time I find it utterly plausible that she's getting, like, bleed-over from the bond with Con and that therefore those nightmares are in fact what it's like to be a vampire, and NOPE. McKinley's vampires are terrifying - I do not want to try and get inside their heads.

This is an excellent point about SOF, especially since they had been getting all those reports about vampire body parts raining down in No Town (which, I guess vampires stop being able to inhabit vampire space when they cease, uh, life is probably the best term for it? Since all the battles took place in vampire space, but the body parts were showing up in human space?) and were probably geared up to deal with vampires. I tend to buy that he's just too exhausted to get away, after - no matter how much more able to think on his feet he was than an in-shock Rae, I don't think he'd have been able to put that much forethought into it.

As for being "his type of vampire" - do we really know what type of vampire he is? Like, clearly he still eats people (at least sometimes) but he must also have dealings with humans (not just Rae), even if their particular alliance is a new thing for human and vampire kind? Like, I know we've talked before about human/vampire relations having to be a thing that someone has had before (ex: the Blaises and Con's master), but mutual life-saving to bind a vampire to you and you to the vampire is probably a new thing, there being considerable antipathy on both sides.

[biggersandwich]

It's interesting, because by the end I'm certainly invested enough in Con and Rae's relationship that I'm glad they're not totally going their separate ways, but I agree, I never feel like we're missing out because we don't get Con's preparations and his feelings about them.

I had not thought about that rain of vampire bits, but that seems both plausible and incredibly disgusting, so very in keeping with the book as a whole. I could see a combination of the two motivations for Con? Because he was probably exhausted enough to be unsure that he could get away cleanly, but he does seem to at least be considering her relationship with SOF as well as his own during the interrogation, even if my speculations are going into a lot more detail than his probably would have been.

Hmmm, that just makes me think about how we actually have no idea that Bo and his gang couldn't blend at least as easily as Con does, given that we never see them in a moment when they have any incentive to hide. I agree that Rae and Con's relationship is definitely giving both of them some unforeseen side effects, but Con's side is so vague! There is something that's supposed to be different about Con though, he's no Edward Cullen or Angel abstinent-type, but he clearly doesn't kill regularly and it's supposed to give him something, but we just don't know enough about vampires in this universe to be able to see it clearly!

[accidentallymel]

Oh I definitely agree that he's probably considering her relationship with SOF during the interrogation - and I'd say by that time he's probably gotten enough of his brain back that he's thinking, if not quite as in depth as your speculation, at least along those lines. I don't know how much about human politics he knows about/cares about, though - vampire politics seem to be quite different, and it's certainly been a while since he was human, y'know? But he probably has a grasp of the basics, at least insofar as "SOF looks unkindly at alliances between humans and vampires" goes.

Definitely not an abstinent type, but maybe he just doesn't play with his food? My general impression was that Bo was a big fan of the "savor" that torment provides, and that had come back to bite him (and, presumably, all other vampires who live in the same way). So there may not be any "truly clean death" between a vampire and a human, but if you make them as clean as possible you aren't left accountable to the recoil of the torment? *shrugs* More worldbuilding questions, what else is new?

[biggersandwich]

Yeah, I'm not sure he'd care at all about the internal SOF politics if he knew about them, but I'm sure he's well aware that they have extraordinary powers when it comes to vampires and he'd rather that they weren't applied to him.

Con says he grew tired of it, but it's not clear if that means he stopped or cut back or did it differently. Obviously, he was considering killing someone for Rae, so he's not that far reformed, but it isn't really clear if that would have been one of his regular killings or if the magic required it and he would not have otherwise done so.

[accidentallymel]

Yeah no - I don't know if reformed is the word I would use, necessarily? Because like you said, he thought about killing someone, and clearly he has to eat, although it's not entirely clear what he does eat, like, at the end there he needs to eat but Rae doesn't seem bothered - is this because she doesn't think he's going to kill, or because she is just not thinking about it?

[biggersandwich]

Well, I at least get the impression that he thinks of himself as reformed? It's just clear that doesn't quite go as far as typical human ethics...

It's not impossible that at the end he's going to go eat some deer? (To which I have no objections, because I've lived places with urban deer and fuck 'em, the pests.) At least he doesn't spend all that time whining about how animal blood just doesn't taste the saaaaaaaame and it's somewhat implied that there are in fact a different set of pleasures in eating them so he probably does quite a bit. But yes, it is another loose end because it's never really ruled out that he might be off to taste some human!

[accidentallymel]

Yeah trying to apply human ethics to a vampire doesn't really get you very far in Sunshine's world, huh? (Also can't tell which particular set of abstinent vampires we're mocking with the "animal blood just doesn't taste the saaaaame" spiel, which - one of my favorite fics ever involves the Doctor being deposited by the TARDIS in the Pacific Northwest and chasing the Cullens off of Earth, because they're actually aliens, I HAVE A LOT OF ISSUES WITH SMEYERS' VAMPIRES, OKAY)

[biggersandwich]

It was a general, all-purpose sort of mock, really. I've seen it done well as a world-building detail or part of discussion about how vampires are supposed to be this representation of sensuality, but it's actually a very narrow form of it because most possible kinds of sensuality are lost to them, even if what remains is particularly intense. Of course, I've also seen it done where you just want to smack the characters and make them stop whining that it's super hard to not kill people and they're basically saints because now their food is kind of bland, how terrible for them. SMeyer's vamps are a particularly ridiculous example though because why on earth are they even vampires when she doesn't want to use any of the mythos at all????

[accidentallymel]

AMEN