Book Review: Sunshine
Just a quick book review to fill a few precious spare moments…
I wanted to like Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. And I guess, in the end, I did, though I don’t think I’d read it again.
In essence, it’s the story of Rae, nicknamed Sunshine, who’s a baker in a small town in a sort of post-apocalyptic world where the “apocalypse” in question was the Voodoo Wars, wherein all sorts of supernatural nasties, aka “Others,” wreaked havoc on humanity. Humanity sort of won, but the supernatural nasties are still around, and still wreaking havoc while the normal humans attempt to live normal lives. Rae counts herself a “normal human” until one ill-advised evening jaunt out to a lake, where she’s attacked and captured by vampires, who leave her chained to a wall in an old house, within range of a starving vampire who’s an enemy of Bo, the ancient vamp who orchestrated her capture.
Of course, the story wouldn’t be terribly interesting if it ended there. Instead, as it turns out, Sunshine manages to find a mostly-forgotten part of her past and her father’s family history as magic-handlers. And it also turns out that Constantine, the starving vampire who was theoretically supposed to have her for supper, is actually kind of a decent guy. Yanno, for a vampire. At least, he declines to eat her, and together they escape from the house and Bo’s minions.
The rest of the book is largely concerned with Sunshine dealing with the fact that she technically rescued (as she was rescued by) a vampire, which is usually a big no-no because they’re unequivocally evil. And if that’s true, what does it mean about her? Oh and by the way, somehow she managed to keep said vampire from bursting into flames in daylight, which means she’s not entirely human herself. And of course, she and Con have the pesky issue of the ancient vampire they escaped from, who’s none too pleased about it. And then there’s the SOF, a sort of special ops force in charge of dealing with the Other threat. And the fact that she has to be up at 4 a.m. to bake cinnamon rolls.
The book is told in the first person from Sunshine’s point of view, and that was one of its faults, in my opinion. The narration is disjointed and prone to long diversions, as well as wall-of-text stream of consciousness ramblings. I really struggled to get through some of the bits where not much was happening outside of Sunshine’s head. I also didn’t quite buy a lot of the slang and jargon she used - it all seemed like McKinley was trying too hard to come up with different words for the same things we have now (the internet, computers, etc.), and it didn’t quite ring true. I couldn’t say exactly why, though…
The world and mythology McKinley creates is rich, and I’d love to read something else set in this place (though perhaps told by someone with a little more coherence…) This book, however, will have to get by with only 3.5 stars. Worth reading, but don’t put it at the top of your list.