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A review by songwind
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
4.0
This book is an engaging take on an alternate earth where magic and inhuman Others coexist with people. The most inimical and dangerous Others are vampires.
Rae (Sunshine to her friends) is a baker at her step-dad's cafe. She's extremely good at, and has a pretty good life. But everyone needs to blow off steam every now and then. So Sunshine heads out to the lake, where no one goes due to fallout from the human/vampire wars, to get away from it all.
Unfortunately, someone does go there. She's captured by vampires and used to torment another vamp who's chained up in their hidey hole. And the trouble is just starting.
The biggest strength of this book is world-building. The Earth proposed by McKinley is rich and well thought out. The vampires are strange and inhuman, not just people with pointy teeth. The history, which we only get in bits and pieces, begs for follow up novels.
The voice of Sunshine (who narrates in first person past tense) is well developed, consistent and well textured.
There are few odd leaps of logic by the characters, and one scene in particular that seems weirdly out of place, but all in all I really liked it.
The ending will probably be frustrating for some people. There are a ton of loose ends, including for a major sub-plot and conflict from the story line.
Rae (Sunshine to her friends) is a baker at her step-dad's cafe. She's extremely good at, and has a pretty good life. But everyone needs to blow off steam every now and then. So Sunshine heads out to the lake, where no one goes due to fallout from the human/vampire wars, to get away from it all.
Unfortunately, someone does go there. She's captured by vampires and used to torment another vamp who's chained up in their hidey hole. And the trouble is just starting.
The biggest strength of this book is world-building. The Earth proposed by McKinley is rich and well thought out. The vampires are strange and inhuman, not just people with pointy teeth. The history, which we only get in bits and pieces, begs for follow up novels.
The voice of Sunshine (who narrates in first person past tense) is well developed, consistent and well textured.
There are few odd leaps of logic by the characters, and one scene in particular that seems weirdly out of place, but all in all I really liked it.
The ending will probably be frustrating for some people. There are a ton of loose ends, including for a major sub-plot and conflict from the story line.