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Sunshine | 
| Author: Robin Mckinley
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
Category: Book
Used (3) from £11.85
Avg. Customer Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 3398047
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0425224015
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780425224014
ASIN: 0425224015
Publication Date: September 1, 2008
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| Customer Reviews: Read 27 more reviews...
 Interesting but... November 5, 2008
After reading the great reviews on Amazon for this book, I ordered it and with much anticipation read it. And now... I can't decide if I liked this book or not.
Oh, it was an interesting book. There are some parts that are quite good, and then some that was down-right boring. (I skipped them, something I never liked doing)
There were some funny moments that I quite enjoyed. The story was a good idea and this alone made me finsh it, hoping it would rdeem itself but...
Things I like about this book.
I loved Sunshine, and how Robin McKinley makes her the embodiment of the sun factor.(It was extremely fascinating.) I liked Sunshine's lightness to Constantine's darkness, and the dialogues between them. Also liked R.M's different take on vampires, that was interesting. And I didn't even mind that the hero wasn't the romance novel stereo-type, good-loooking vampire. (From what I understood he was ugly and smelled?) anyway, there was something about Constantine that grew on you.
But I did mind the narratives and endless detailing. In my opinion, it tended towards boring and makes the heroine sound irritatingly whiny. (I didn't find Sunshine's actions irritating though, infact she was quite brave, saving Constantine, and later killing a 'sucker' with a dinner knife.) At times you lose the thread of the story and can't relate to it. Less narrating would have given better use of space for more dialogue between H/H.
Didn't care much for the fact that the book tended to leave you hanging in the air, so many loose ends... who is Mel? I quite liked him, and there's barely any background info on Constantine. According to the author's blog, she won't be writing a sequel, and that makes me feel quite cheated...
 Synopsis from back cover October 22, 2008
There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it's unwise to walk. Sunshine knew that. But there hadn't been any trouble out at the lake for years, and she needed a place to be alone for a while. Unfortunately, she wasn't alone. She never heard them coming. Of course you don't, when they're vampires.
They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion, within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight.
She knows that he's a vampire. She knows that she's to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet, when dawn breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is he who needs her to help him to survive the day.....
Unbelievably refreshing take on the vampire genre October 8, 2008
I have always been since my early years, a devoted fan of vampire fiction. I love it so much I wrote my university dissertaion on the figure of the vampire in classic and modern literature.
For me, no vampire book has ever been able to come close to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. I am an avid fan of Laurel K Hamilton's Anita Blake novels (until they desended into badly written repetitive erotica anyway)as well as Charline Harris, but I see them as entertainment to feed my vampire induced obsession, rather than something to be treasured and appreciated as fine works of literature.
Sunshine blew me away and is the most compelling vampire novel I have read for a long time, possibly even the best I have read since The Chronicles.
The figure of the vampire has lost is essence in most modern vampire novels. Gone is the misique, the danger, that sense of being in the presence of something that isn't a part of your world, doesn't think or behave like a human. Instead it is replaced by long haired men who meet that special girl and change for them, essentially becoming people who have the misfortune of having to drink blood to live, and are usually very good in bed. Now, while these types of vampires have their purpose and are entertaining they have become saturated in a genre that is full of mediocre writers with unoriginal ideas.
Sunshine is very hard to describe, for me its untangible quality is what made is so compelling. Sunshine is the nickname of Rae Seddon, formally Raven Blaise, the daughter of Onyx Blaise, a powerful magic handler. When her parents divorced when she was young, she became "her mothers daughter" as she describes it, and leaves her father, and his world and abilities behind her.
Immersing herself in the bakery her Mum's new husband Charlie owns, Sunshine finds an affinity for baking and she fills her life with it, as if she is a filling a void where something else should dwell.
Turns out this void she tries to fill is her affinity and inheritance of magic handling powers, from her fathers side of the family.
This comes in handy when one night she is captured by a group of vampires, taken to a decaying mansion and shackled to the wall as a fresh, live meal. Turns out the vampire she was the intended victim or temptation for is a prisoner too, shakled to the wall opposite.
After an instant, yet bizarely founded alliance forms between Sunshine and the vampire prisoner, named 'Constantine' when she manages to harness her latent abilities for the first time to transform her pocket knife to a key and rescue them both.
Sunshine's decision to save the vampire changes her world and his, whether for better or for worse is still to be decided, even at the end of the book.
Several things make this book amazing. Sunshine is a truly fleshed out and believable character and the first person narration just makes her more interesting. I have seen some reviewers complain about the constant references to her baking, but this just adds to the way you get drawn into Sunshine's world and her experiences and you realise why she is so immersed and obsessed with this as the book progresses and you see how empty her life is apart from her baking.
Constantine. We find so little out about this vampire in the book, which is both a good and a bad thing because he remains a compelling mystery which makes you yearn for more information. Gone is the pale white ivory skin, full pouting lips and shining hair of most vampires you read about and it is replaced by skin the colour of mushrooms and a otherwordly and supernatural way of moving, speaking, laughing giving you the impression that he truly is an alien creature, who may be similar to humans in some appearneces only.
Yet the bond that forms between Constantine and Sunshine is one of the main things that makes this book so mesmerising. There is a contsant undercurrent of fear, mainly from Sunshine but with moments from Con, showing that just maybe, his bond to Sunshine unnerves him. However, along with this is a compulsion to be in each others company, an attraction that is romantic and even sexual in nature in some ways, but more reflective of our obsession with the unknown, our obsession of the darkness or light, in the case of Con.
There is so much more to say about this book, the world in which it is set is like yet unlike our own, set in no particular time the world is recovering from the mysterious 'Voodoo Wars' trying to accept, yet ignore that strange creatures the humans know inhabit their world, creatures from myths and legends...
I have seen complaints that this books cried out for a sequel, and I have to admit that after just finshing the book today I came onto this website to search for one and was disapointed not to find it. However, the ending is perfect and in many ways a sequel could spoil it, as the wealth of information we are given but is not elaborated on in the book is another reason it was so compelling for me.
This is a book that requires you to use your mind, your imagination to fill in the gaps and take whatever message you may find. I am a secondary school English teacher and I would be more than happy to read and analyse this book in my classes for many of its attributes.
I highly recommend this book to anyone, especially those who like me, adore the genre, but just need something different to remind why it is we adore vampires and everything they represent in the first place. This books invigorated my love for the genre and I love it for this.
Difficult to sum up in mere words October 2, 2008
I am having trouble reviewing this novel, as I am sure other people also have. It is not the premise, nor the characters, or even the plot line that makes it a difficult read, but rather other elements of the story make me a little...aprehensive with regards to this review.
The review will contail 'spoiler's from here on.
The story starts off with a spunky, rather normal heroine by the name of Rae. She is twenty-something year old baker who got her high school deploma and then decided not to pursue a caree in education. She loves her job and has a boyfriend of four years, Mel, whome the reader knows nothing about.
We find out later that she lives in a near future where 'Others'-that is werewolves and ghouls and demons spawn and such inhabit the world. She gets kidnapped by the worst possible Other-Vampire. She gets chained to a wall and finds out her fate is to be dinner to another Vampire, Constantine.
Right, so that's the plot overview. She saves Constantine with her latent Magic power of the Sun, and thus they escape.
I really wanted to like this book, but it felt to me like I had seen this juicy, lovely, mouth-watering sandwich in a bakery; with crisp lettuce, mayonnaise, the best, ripe tomatoes and chicken slices, only to get it and find that the lettuce is wilted, the chicken dry and the mayonnaise out of date. There were so many good-no great- ideas that the author could have developed but she chose not to. Half formed ideas about the Vampires could have been elaborated on. The Voodoo Wars? what did they entail? There was a mention of it here and there but nothing substantial.
Another thing that really annoyed me was the pages and pages and mind-numbingly boring pages of exposition. Someone would ask Rae a question and she would go off on a tangent, talking about something or another for pages before answering the actual question-whereby the reader would have had to go back pages just to see what the answer acutally meant. It was like a huge info dump and the readers-ergo me- did not appreciate it. Especially when in the middle of a crucial fight scene or emotional scene-when she would go off I had to skip pages just to see what the outcome of the situation was. While info dump is not bad, it is VERY VERY BAD when done in the midst of things. For example, she was kidnapped by Vampires and we didn't find out how she actually reacted until after FIVE FREAKING PAGES of exposition. That was much.
The only thing that redeemed this book for me was Constantine. The author created him perfectly. He isn't the normal, muscle-bound beautiful, arrogant sadistic vampire we see in modern fiction and I loved that. I also loved how she described her Vampires; they were shying away from the conventions of their species and that was my favourite thing about the novel; gone are the seductive men of power and in its presence is a dangerous, inhuman species of something completely not human. She managed to convey these creatures just as they are; monsters. Even Constantine was alien and that was what gave the novel substance.
I am so disappointed because this novel could have been so much more. It could have been one of the best and most original work of fantasy literature out there. But, she failed, although not totally. I still keep this book as one of my favourites, and although there are many flaws, I still like what she did with such a predictable genre. My final thoughts are uncertain. Did I like this book? Yes, most definitely. Was it something awe-inspiring? Elements of it, yes, but on the whole, no.
Brilliant Read September 1, 2008
This is so far the only McKinley book I've read. It took me by surprise and developed from what I thought was an intriguing, albeit, slowlish start, into a brilliant story. I am still reeling form having just finished reading i! I loved Constantine and Sunshine, they were original and very richly written, but also the peripheral characters. Sunshine, a baker, has for want of a better dscription, her hidden identity thrust upon her, when a bunch of vampires randomly kindaps her as a sacrificial lamb in their power wars. Only Constantie, the vampire to whom she is being offered, and who is also under compulsion, refuses to cooperate. And so does Sunshine from then on, which is where the book gets really interesting.
The plot was intense and consuming and written in good taste (rare in this genre), with subtle thoughtful and original overtones. I saw all the recommendations by other authors, such as Neil Gaiman, but was dubious at first. Well, it seems that the weren't lying.
Its a stand also book which I regretted when I finished, but I suppose it packs all the better a punch for it. Thoroughly recommended.
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