Book Review: Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

One night Rae feels like she needs to get away from everyone, including her family and boyfriend, and have some space to think, so she goes out for a drive by the lake. There she is kidnapped by a group of vampires. They take her to a heavily guarded house by the lake and put her in a room with another vampire, who is chained to the wall, yet able to reach her. Rae is clearly meant to be food, so she is surprised when the vampire doesn't devour her immediately, and instead asks her to talk to him. But he isn't like other vampires, and, it turns out, Rae isn't like other humans either.

 

Sunshine is a very strange book to review. I enjoyed it immensely but was also really annoyed by it! The plot is quite an unusual one as the bulk of the story takes place after Rae escapes the vampires and explores the effect this has on her life. Though she claims that she can't remember anything, and tries to convince herself that life will continue as normal, supernatural law enforcement officials that she has known all her life start turning their attention to her, eager to find out what happened that night. Her mother starts leaving protection charms around. And the vampire that she was held prisoner with hasn't disappeared either.

There's a lot of detail in this book. Rae goes off on a lot of tangents, which some readers don't like, but I loved it. I really enjoyed all the different elements that were brought into the story. The world building and characterisation was excellent and I was desperate to find out what Rae would do and what would be revealed about each character in the end.

And then it just stops.

And not in the first-book-in-a-series cliffhanger kind of way.

At The End of the story, almost nothing has been explained, let alone resolved. The one major relationship has developed, but that's it.

It's extremely frustrating. It seems like there is so much interesting material left to explore, but to the author, the most interesting part, that relationship, has developed, so that's the end of the book. To her it's a love story, but to me, it could have been a lot of other things as well. It could have been an epic about the end of the world. It could have been the best urban fantasy series I'd ever had the privilege of reading.

I respect the right of the author, who is extremely talented, to tell the story she wants to tell. But at the same time I can emphasise with all those people who find Sunshine annoyingly long-winded. I loved the detail, but when most of it turns out to have no bearing on the ending, it seems unnecessary. 

Would I recommend Sunshine? Yes, if you love urban fantasy and like vampires to be properly terrifying, and if you want to see some really interesting ideas, or if you enjoy reading about unusual romantic relationships. But if you like to have mysteries explained, don't get your hopes up about the ending.

I would more broadly recommend Robin McKinley's Spindle's End, which is also full of interesting characters but has a much tighter ending. I've also read Beauty, which is extremely popular, but I didn't like it as much as Spindle's End.

Top Ten Tuesday: Favourite Romances

This is my sixteenth Top Ten Tuesday post! Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. I have taken a rather broad view of this topic, choosing to pick my favourite romances within books, rather than my favourite romantic novels, because I don't read many books that could be simply classed as romantic novels. I then narrowed it down by choosing only books that I've previously reviewed. Enjoy!

 

Photo by Katerha

Top Ten Favourite Romances

1. Jeane Smith and Michael Lee from Adorkable, by Sarra Manning - Girl dislikes everything boy represents, boy cannot understand girl at all. But their lust for each other starts to overpower their initial reluctance.

2. Ruby and Noel from the Ruby Oliver Quartet, by E. Lockhart - because they're completely adorable, as frustrating and confused as they can sometimes be.

3. Val and Ravus, from Valiant, by Holly Black - the only Beauty and the Beast retelling that I have read so far that didn't stink of Stockholm Syndrome, and Val kicks butt.

4. Mia and Adam, from If I Stay and Where She Went, by Gayle Forman - because before the accident they were such a vomitously cute couple, and they proved their love after things got all, well, car crashy.

5. Riley and Dylan, from Everything Beautiful, by Simmone Howell - two unconventional teenagers that meet at Christian summer camp, and go on to combine an adventure with their unusual romance.

6. Naomi and Will, from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, by Gabrielle Zevin - because he loves her so patiently, even though she is afraid of her feelings.

7. Nicola and Battle, from Empress of the World, by Sara Ryan - because of Nicola's journey towards self-discovery, and the open ending.

8. Anthea and Robin, from Girl Meets Boy, by Ali Smith - First non-YA book on the list! This is a short book mainly about a) two sisters with very different ways of seeing the world, b) gender, and c) love.

9. Ash and Kaisa, from Ash, by Malinda Lo - hello, slow burn.

10. Tom and The Perfectionist, from All My Friends Are Superheroes, by Andrew Kaufman - I'm worried that anything I could write here would spoil your enjoyment of this book. So just go read it.

Honourable mentions to some of my other favourite fictional couples: Aria and Perry from Under the Never Sky, Allie and Carter from Night School, Flora and Charles from Cold Comfort Farm (it's okay that he's her cousin because it's a satire, right?), Heather and Morag from The Good Fairies of New York, Frankie Landau-Banks and pranks, Sam from Slam and maturity, everyone and everyone in How I Paid For College, Maria and Michael from Roswell (hated Max and Liz on rewatch, but Maria and Michael forever!!!1one), Seth and Summer from The OC (in honour of my sister), and obviously, Edie and Dylan from the Diary of a Crush books.

Book Review: Ash, by Malinda Lo

Photo by Moyan Brenn

When Ash's mother dies, her father remarries, but he doesn't live much longer himself. Ash finds herself at the mercy of her ruthless stepmother Lady Isobel and stepsisters Ana and Clara. She is forced to move away from her childhood home and work as a servant, and she copes by developing an obsession with her book of fairytales.

Ash thinks the fairy she meets in the Wood holds the key to her escape, though it may mean death and leaving everything she knows behind. But when she meets the King's Huntress, she starts to change her mind...

This is a book which is all about beautiful imagery and evocative language. The atmosphere is as important as the plot, which is pretty straightforward. The characterisation falls by the wayside a little - although Ash, Lady Isabel, Ana, Clara, and Sidhean were all very clear for me, I thought that Ash's mother and Kaisa were a bit too quickly drawn. There isn't much worldbuilding either, but traditional fairy tales don't really have worldbuilding, so I didn't mind. We learn enough to make the story work.

I loved the idea of the Royal Hunt led by the King's Huntress. It was a great way to work a female character with power and royal connections into the story, and the rituals involved in the hunt evoked history and tradition. I also really enjoyed the sections set at Lady Isobel's sister's house, where Ash is easily accepted by the other staff and joins them at the Yule bonfire. These busy scenes made a excellent contrast with Ash's many walks alone in the Wood.

If you need all your fiction to be snappy and plot-driven and don't want to spend time going on the occasional tangent and following dream sequences, Ash is probably not for you.But if you like books that are a little ethereal, give it a go.

If you are a fan of fairy tale retellings, I would consider Ash to be a must-read. I loved seeing how Malinda Lo twists and rearranges all the typical fairy tale elements. The fairy godmother becomes a slightly menacing fairy man and the three balls take place weeks apart. She also makes the traditional - and new - villains of the story seem at least partly sympathetic, which was interesting, and realistic.

I'm looking forward to reading Huntress, which is a loosely-connected prequel, and learning more about the traditions of the Royal Hunt, and meeting more of Malinda Lo's characters.

Book Review: Fabulous Nobodies, by Lee Tulloch

Reality Nirvana Tuttle (daughter of a hippy, which she finds deeply embarrassing), a woman with 'seventy-two different fashion personalities', is the 'doorwhore' of the nightclub Less Is More in New York City. Her job involves deciding which "nobodies" are allowed in, on the basis of how "fabulous" they are. She wields great power in the club scene, her compliments and criticisms acting as law, until one night she fails to recognise Jackie O in a drab outfit and is fired for her mistake.

This is a absolute disaster for Reality (or 'Really', as her friends call her), who is replaced by her unstylish nemesis, Ricci, a woman that lets just anyone into the club. Reality also needs the money to pay for her tiny flat and so that she can collect an even wider range of clothes. She prefers frocks to people, which is not surprising as all her "friends" are as mean as she is. Reality is of course desperate for attention as well, wanting to one day become a somebody, and has met the gossip columnist for Frenzee Magazine, Hugo Falk, so all she needs to do now is something fabulous enough for him to write about. Eventually she hits upon the solution to all her problems - she and her neighbour Freddie will open their own club in their apartments!

This novel was originally published in 1989 and I would describe it as quirky, satirical proto-chick-lit. It has dated slightly - mostly in terms of language like the slang, but I doubt the fashion club scene has changed at all. The characters and their adventures are silly and superficial, but likeable and funny. Reality genuinely loves her frocks, believing that every dress she owns has a name, a personality and a voice. She can't stand the pain she can feel emanating from them when they are abused by other people, she has to buy them so she can look after them properly. The other characters also seem pretty horrible at first, but when they show how much they really love Reality, they seem a lot more sympathetic.

This novel is a fast and easy read that I would recommend this book to fans of fashion, satire, quirky stories, or Sex and the City - I remember one Amazon reviewer describing Reality as being like a young Carrie, before she got the bizarrely high-paid job as a newspaper columnist, would be. I think the only downside is that it is so short - I want to find out what happens to these characters next!

Book Review: Beauty, by Robin McKinley

Beauty is a retelling of the story of 'Beauty and the Beast', in first person, from the point of view of Beauty. The storyline is pretty much the same as in the traditional story but some details are changed.

Beauty is a nickname, her real name is Honour but as a child she decided that she'd rather be called Beauty, and the name stuck. She does not, however, consider herself beautiful. Beauty likes riding horses and reading, and when her father's business fails and one of her sisters marries, the whole family moves out of the town to start a new life in the countryside, and Beauty finds herself very capable at manual labour. Then news comes from town that one of the ships Beauty's father owned may have returned, and he goes out to see if this is true. On the way home he becomes lost, and finds his way to the home of the beast.

This book does an excellent job of fleshing out the characters of 'Beauty and the Beast', making them more real. Beauty's sisters are not ugly caricatures here, which I liked, and the magical castle in which the Beast lived was a fascinating place to see described.

This is probably the best-loved of Robin McKinley's books, the first of her novels to be published, I was recommended it several times before I finally picked it up in a library sale. However, I preferred her more recent novel, Spindle's End, which I read before Beauty (review coming soon). Most readers seem to think Beauty the better book, but I didn't enjoy it as much. Beauty is an interesting but pretty passive heroine, and 'Beauty and the Beast' was never one of my favourite stories - it's basically a romanticisation of Stockholm syndrome! The Beast in Beauty is just like the one in the original tale - he holds Beauty hostage in the hope that she will fall in love with him, and I just couldn't see him as a hero. I also found Beauty to be too obsessed with the way she looks, and was disappointed that in the end she does become "beautiful" (which means taller and more mature looking), I would have preferred to see her get over it!

I think anyone who loves the story of 'Beauty and the Beast' will really enjoy this, but if you always found the plot of the original to be a bit thin, you won't like it so much. This is a book aimed at children, I'd say pre-teens onwards would be best suited to it, but many adults have enjoyed it as well.