Sunshine

One of my favorite books, The Blue Sword, was written by Robin McKinley. For a while, it was the only book of hers that I had read but I've slowly started reading more of her works. The latest book I read by her is Sunshine. It won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature in 2004, which gives me even more reason to love the book.

The story takes place in a world very much like ours but with one minor change: there are zombies, vampires, weres of many different animals, succubi and demons. Collectively, they are called Others. The story is set after the Voodoo Wars, which were between humans and the Others. Magic plays a big part in the story and there are many bad spots, or places where black magic thrives.

The main character is a young woman whose name is Rae but is nicknamed Sunshine. She is a baker at her stepfather's coffee shop. One evening she heads out to her family's old cabin by the lake and is abducted by vampires. This changes her life. She is chained to the wall in a ballroom but she is not the only prisoner. A vampire named Constantine is also being held and she's supposed to be a treat for him. Sunshine manages to escape by turning the knife she hid in her bra into a key. She also frees Con and they leave together, in the daytime. Sunshine is able to keep Con from bursting into flames from the sun if they are touching.

The rest of the book takes place over the next six months. Sunshine has to explain why she was missing without saying it was vampires and without mentioning that she freed a vampire. She and Con have formed a bond that could threaten both their lives if anyone from SOF (Special Others Forces) found out. Sunshine has to deal with her magical heritage and the knowledge that there are more partbloods (part human-part demon) around her than she originally thought.

The novel was very good. I love McKinley's works and her style of writing. Sunshine was a little different, as it was from Sunshine's point of view and was very honest and open. It gave the whole situation a touch of reality: this is how someone really feels when their world is stripped away from them. Like most of McKinley's other works, the book was a little slow at the beginning. But once it took off, it just kept going. McKinley frequently creates new worlds or worlds that look like ours but with a slight difference, and her books usually start right in the middle. As the story goes, she'll explain things here or there to catch you up. Sometimes this makes things really confusing but that was not the case here. I found everything easy to follow and understand.

And as far as vampire novels go, it wasn't a cheesy romance or some sort of erotic thriller. The Others were handled very well and the vampires were not appealing. Sunshine frequently thought about how awkward Con was and how different he was from humans. She never saw him as blindingly attractive and I'm honestly not sure she ever thought he was attractive. I actually have a quote describing the antagonist, a master vampire who is not physically seen until the very end of the book. What I like about the following quote is how disgusting McKinley makes him sound.

“I said that monster doesn’t cover it. There is no word for a several-hundred-year-old vampire who has performed every available wickedness over and over till he has to invent unavailable ones because he’d worn the others out. His flesh was not flesh; it was a viscous ooze, held together by malice. His voice was a manifestation of malignancy, for he had no tongue, no larynx; his eyes were the purest imagination of evil: flawless in a way that flesh could never be.” 

There are two other quotes that I want to leave you with. The first is a rather charming description of what you feel like after killing several vampires. Again, it's disgusting but I love the imagery that McKinley uses.

“I wish I could forget how it feels, your hair stuck to your skull with blood, foul blood running gummily down inside your clothes, invading your privacy, your decency, your humanity, till it chafes you with every breath, every movement, the tug of it as it dries on your skin feeling like some kind of snare. Blood in your mouth, that you cannot spit the vile taste of away.”

And the last quote. I love the contrast that McKinley creates between opposites. I love that such a surprising element is possible, as I myself love lying in the sun. And I just love the last line. 

“The hierarchies of magic handling are no particular study of mine. But your particular affinity is for sunlight: your element, as it were. It is usually one of the standard four: earth, air, water, fire. Sometimes it is metal, sometimes wood. I have never heard of one for sunlight before, but there are—are tests for these things. Yours is neither fire nor air, but a bit of both, and something else. While I was doing the tests and coming up nowhere, I thought of sunlight because of all the days I have seen you lying in the sun like a cat or a dog—I have only ever seen you truly relaxed like that, lying motionless in sunlight. And you told me once about the year you were ill, when you lived in a basement flat, and how you cured yourself by lying in front of the sunny windows when you moved upstairs. I thought of your nickname—how I myself had relied on your nickname to tell me the real truth about you, after the vampire visited you….As for your—let us call it counteraffinity: your counteraffinity may be for vampires. I have never heard of this either, but I do know it is often a magic handler with a principal affinity for water who can cross a desert most easily; a handler with a principal affinity for air who can hold her breath the longest, someone with an affinity for earth who flies most easily. It is the strength of the element in you that makes you more able to resist—and simultaneously embrace—its opposite. You are not consumed by the dark because you are full of light.”