September 2006

Sunshine by Robin McKinley
Jove Books (2004), ISBN: 0515138819
Reviewed by Paula Chaffee Scardamalia

Paula Chaffee Scardamalia is an author, speaker, coach and weaver. Her new book, Weaving a Woman's Life: Spiritual Lessons from the Loom was released in April. She also writes book reviews for Foreword Magazine. A dream inspired her to write her fantasy novel, The Shadow Weaver, loosely structured on the fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty.

After reading McKinley's Deerskin a number of years ago, I thought that it was her best, and my favorite, of her books. I was wrong. Though released in hardcover in 2003 and in paperback at the end of 2004, my recent discovery and reading of Sunshine this past month may knock the other book from its place of honor.

Having discovered the fantastic and erotic delights waiting in the pages of vampire novels by authors like Laurell K. Hamilton, Christine Feehan, and others, I was intrigued and delighted to find that McKinley had written her own vampire novel. I wondered how hers would parallel or differ from those of her peers.

McKinley excels in taking a myth or fairytale and giving it her special twist to create a story that is uniquely her own. She did it in Deerskin and she does it again in Sunshine. She deftly combines the archetypal themes of the heroine's journey and Beauty and the Beast with contemporary issues like racial prejudice, and the rights of the individual versus the needs of society, to create her own unique story that is as enthralling as a vampire's glance.

One night, after a long day baking cinnamon rolls, muffins, and other bakery goodies for her stepfather's coffeehouse customers, Sunshine, the heroine, heads out to the lake to avoid a stressful movie night with family and friends. While remembering days at the lake with her parents before the Voodoo Wars, Sunshine is captured by a group of vampires who take her to an abandoned mansion on the lake and leave her shackled in a room with another vampire.

This vampire, however, is also shackled. Unlike the sultry, sexy, powerful vampires in some works by other authors in the genre, McKinley's vampire, Constantine, is, at first, neither strong, nor sexy, nor even human appearing.

Overall he looked... spidery. Predatory. Alien. Nothing human except that he was more or less the right shape.

He was thin, thin to emaciated, the cheekbones and ribs looking like they were about to split the old-mushroom skin.

Since humans and vampires have been dire enemies since the Voodoo Wars, Sunshine surprises both herself and the vampire when she helps him escape with her from captivity using her transmuting abilities to change her pocketknife into a key.

Although they join forces to avoid the master vampire whose gang had captured them, and though Constantine helps Sunshine heal from a life-threatening wound, because of humans' and vampires' strong antipathy for each other, it isn't until more than halfway through the book that events push her and Constantine into an awareness of their sexual and romantic attraction for one another. Her confusion about her sympathy and concern for the safety and life of Constantine complicates Sunshine's struggle to stay alive while integrating her life as a baker at Charlie's coffeehouse with her newly discovered, sunshine-fed powers and responsibilities as a magic handler. Adding to her problems are her friends at SOF (Special Other Forces) who have her under almost constant observation and who want her to help them track down and capture the Others, especially the vampires.

By the end of the novel, Sunshine and Constantine are still confined by social prejudices and legal ramifications as they work to understand and define their relationship. The ending is not the usual "and they lived happily ever after", for there is an uncertainty as to whether or not they can find a way to move beyond the past to create a future. However, the ending tantalizes us with the possibility of a sequel.

Readers who have fallen in love with the author's offbeat and unusual characters and are yearning for that eventual happily ever after, have asked the author if there will be a sequel. Ask the Story Council, responds the author, as she has when asked that question regarding her other novels. We can only hope that imaginary council will say yes, for in this unusual vampire novel, McKinley has proven her own powers as a very special magic handler.