Hellooooooooo everyone! I've been busy lately . . . started my graduate program, and am wading through roughly 1,296,088 pages of theoretical crud. This means I can't read as much good stuff, worthy of posting here. Also that I have no time or energy.
However, I promised myself that I would blog this book.
Book: Sunshine by Robin McKinley
Genre: Erm. Horror? Except . . . not.
Original Publishing Date: 2003 (fittingly enough, in October!)
I love Robin McKinley. She just writes whatever story comes out, and other people categorize it. She won the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown and an Honor for The Blue Sword. Her Spindle's End is my favorite ever version of Sleeping Beauty. But enough gushing over past books . . . let's have a look at this one.
Rae "Sunshine" Seddon thinks she has a pretty weird life. She gets up at four in the morning, gets home at insane hours, and all her friends come from one place. Don't get weirded out yet--she's no Queen of the Night, just the Queen of the Kitchen at her stepfather's coffee house. It's a life that works for her, though, so she's reasonably content.
Until the night the vampires got her.
No, actually, it wasn't so bad when the vampires got her. It was when she got away that she started to worry about herself. Because, you see, nobody gets away from vampires. And nobody--nobody--helps a vampire to do the same.
All of a sudden, Sunshine is hip-deep in a world of vampire gang wars, Special Other Forces (think demon police, and you won't be too far wrong), and the unsettling realization that magical abilities from her father's side and a possible drop of demon blood from her mother's are gonna make things really interesting for her from now on. Not to mention her strange connection to the vampire she saved, Constantine, who's reminescent of Buffy's Angel, only not as chatty. (Actually, there's a lot about this book that may remind you of Buffy. Heck, Amber Benson, who acted on the show for a couple of seasons, even wrote a rec for the cover!)
And there are still cinnamon rolls to be made at four in the morning.
McKinley sets her story in a sort of alternate Earth, where things that go bump in the night are very real, and very dangerous. She has a slight tendancy to go off on tangents whose story purpose I never did figure out, but I can ignore that for the atmosphere and the experience of R McK writing. She doesn't pull any punches when it comes to gory details, although she doesn't go overboard with them either. The end is unsettling, and more than a little pessimistic, but I still want to read it again.
Signing off now . . . happy reading!
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