Sunshine by Robin McKinley

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This book was recommended to me on my annual shopping trip treat to the Bakka-Phoenix bookstore in Toronto. At least once a year, usually on or around my birthday, I head down and go on a book binge. This year was no different, but I elicited some help from one of the owners of the store in my quest for something interesting to try. She suggested (among others) that I try this one.

Good suggestion.

This is a very dreamy kind of book, almost like a mythical fairy tale but without the romanticizing that you see and read so much of these days when it comes to vampires and other creatures that haunt the night. It has similarities to Charles de Lindt's works in that the main character lives in the real world. It's just that the real world includes vampires. Who, by the way, are as a general rule Not Nice.

The main character, Sunshine, is a talented baker who lives a mundane life that revolves around the cafe in which she works. Her step-father owns it, her mother and boyfriend work there, and her younger step-brothers can usually be found underfoot. One day (it always happens that way, one day) she takes a trip to the lake and ends up a prisoner of some very Not Nice vampires. Another vampire is being imprisoned there as well. What happens as a result of this sequence of events lays the groundwork for this story.

The style has a flavour of Patricia McKillip's magical whimsy -- you can tell that McKinley has written predominantly for the Young Adult and Child markets for fantasy. Reading it is like moving through an extended dream, one of those from which you are loathe to awake because you're just so drawn into the story. It took me a few days to read it because I was savouring.

If you're looking for hard, dark, edgy urban fantasy then you probably won't have the patience for this book. But if you're in the mood to try something a little off the beaten fantasy path, give Sunshine a chance.

Even better, you could drop by Amazon.ca to buy it online. :)