Title: Sunshine
Author: Robin McKinley
Series: n/a
Too much story, left with more questions than answers
I wasn’t going to review this one, but it’s haunted me the last couple of days since I finished it. I don’t feel like I have closure on it, so maybe if I get my thoughts down on paper (as it were), I can get it out of my head.
I really liked the story! It had SO MUCH potential! But it wasn’t well presented and lacked focus in my opinion. It went on and on and on. McKinley had so much story she wanted to tell that she just kinda mixed it all in there and didn’t manage to completely tell any of it. I think it would have made a great series.
I enjoy fantasy, but I can struggle with it if it’s not written in a way that holds my attention. In order for me to absorb all the information, the world building has to be dealt in small chunks—like miniature-Lego-sized. But McKinley built her world with the big kind of Legos—long, rambling passages of exposition that had my eyes glazing over at times. She detailed things that didn’t matter a lick, like all the kinds of weres—none of which we ever saw—and all the other kinds of creatures and abilities in this world, and told us more about the Voodoo Wars than we needed to know. But when the telling was good—and relevant—you can be damn sure I was listening.
I got sick of Sunshine’s weeble-wobbling between fear and curiosity, self-confidence and insecurity. It’s supposed to be an arc, not a zigzag. In the beginning, when it was all new to her and she didn’t know what was going on, her indecision was understandable. But she never seemed to resolve herself to being either a vampire sympathizer or a vampire hater. Also, I got sick of her and SOF pussyfooting around each other and not getting anything done.
But when Con was on set—that’s when the interesting stuff went down.
When Con was there, I felt the tension, which evolved into delicious sexual tension (that scene in his basement-home? Oh boy. *fans self*). When he was there, Sunshine’s burgeoning abilities mattered, so she was most interesting as a character when interacting with him.
I wasn’t sure if McKinley wanted us to like Con or not—her descriptions of his appearance and manner didn’t do him any favors—yet his actions had me falling in love with him. When Sunshine exhausted herself getting him to safety, he took care of her. When trouble was sniffing around her, he came to keep an eye on her. When she was dying of poison, he cured her (that was a weird scene, though). When she helped him wage war on and defeat his enemy, he protected her and gave her his heart’s blood to strengthen her enough to get to safety. When she flipped out on the SOF agents, he worried about her. When she burst into tears, he immediately knelt at her feet and offered comfort. And when she asked him to lie down with her and hold her, just so she wouldn’t feel alone, he obliged (happily, I imagine).
Yes, I fell in love with Con, and was so frustrated when he didn’t even seem to realize what he was feeling, when he didn’t seem to want to develop a relationship with Sunshine. Did he want her or not? I’m going to assume he did and just didn’t know what to do about it, since he demonstrated a desire to spend more time with her at the end. Sunshine was rather in the same boat—she knew she liked him, knew she cared about him, but just didn’t know what to do about it. She had a perfectly good boyfriend, and having a relationship with a vampire was unheard of, despite the books she read. I had nothing against Mel—her boyfriend, who seemed almost too bland for her; I got the feeling she just hung on to him for a fuck buddy—but she would have earned a lot of respect from me if she’d decided to pursue Con and found a way to make it work.
It’s obvious that I cared more about the romance subplot than the central plot, which can only be expected with me. 😉 But I’m not even sure what the central plot was; there was so much rambling about different things that it was hard to define a sure thread. I would guess it was about Sunshine coming into her power, since she was the main character and her biggest conflict was figuring out her abilities and how to feel about them.
But there was the subplot about Beau—I don’t remember being told anything to make me care about that situation. It was just this thing they had to do.
And the subplot about her dad—Did we ever find out if he was dead or what? Was he a vampire, part vampire, or neither? Did Sunshine ever find out if she was part vampire somehow, and that’s why she had an “affinity” for them? And why was her dad such a big deal? And why was Con so disbelieving that Sunshine was Blaze’s daughter, but no one else seemed as shocked? And why did people think Blaze had no children? Sunshine and her mom didn’t leave him until Sunshine was six, I think.
There was the subplot about SOF and the increasing trouble with the Others—Did the Others really take over the world within a hundred years? How did that happen? Did anyone ever figure out that the SOF was full of halfbreeds? What was the deal with that scary head-agent lady? I can’t recall why she was a thing.
We were told a lot about Sunshine’s mom, mostly in relation to Sunshine’s father/heritage, but we didn’t see much of her. Sunshine’s paternal grandmother played a big part, but only in flashbacks. What did happen to her? Did she just get killed during the wars somehow, or was there more to her abrupt disappearance?
Did it matter that Sunshine was so powerful? That she could do what she did? It didn’t seem to have any consequence/repercussions on a larger scale, beyond Con and Beau.
And there’s so much I want to know about Con. (Judging by all the fan art of scenes starring Con and Sunshine, I’m not the only one who thought he was the best part of the book.) Did he ever explain why he wouldn’t drink Sunshine? Was it just to defy Beau in the beginning, then because he’d come to care for her, or did he have some philosophy about not drinking humans? Did he drink humans when she wasn’t around? Why was he alone? Didn’t most vampires tend to form packs? What were his experiences? Did he ever develop a personality as a result of hanging out with Sunshine? He seemed to develop emotions, so why not more of a personality?
And what did they go and do that night at the end? What an awful place to stop a story! Maybe it was the end of the Beau storyline, but there was so much yet to come for Con and Sunshine!
Admittedly, I listened to the audiobook while working outside, so the book didn’t always have my full attention and I may have missed some answers. But I can’t have missed all of them. A book shouldn’t leave me with that many questions, at least in my opinion. I could probably go on, but this is long enough.
I know others have felt the same as I do about this book, because “robin mckinley sunshine sequel” is right up there in Google’s suggestions. A while back, she was rumored to have been working on another book set in Sunshine’s world, but it never appeared, and she doesn’t seem in any hurry to answer our questions—which embitters me a little.
McKinley’s Beauty will always be a favorite of mine, but I’m not sure I want to dive into any more of her work in the near future. I felt so unsatisfied and unfulfilled at the end of this book that I’m afraid of feeling the same way in regards to her other books.
I came into this with high expectations because I love her books. Part one was great and then my enthusiasm dwindled by part 2. The hero and the crown is definitely worth reading though as well as the blue sword. Give them a try instead.
I’ll give them a shot. Thanks for the recommendation! 🙂
I completely agree with you. Robin created a story so full of promise and if she could only get her thoughts straight I have no doubt it would have been one of her best series’s.
I think a re-read will answer your question as to the Blaize Family. Her father war a major magic handler. Maybe more. Sunshine has _no_ idea what she is. She does know what she is not . Then there is just bare hint that her mother may also not be as ordinary human as she presents. It is all very subtle but that bit is is a bit buried.
Hi, Anna! A reread might provide a little more understanding; they usually do. I actually have reread parts of it. I love revisiting the scenes where Sunshine and Constantine interact. I did get that her dad was apparently some legendary mage, and I got that Sunshine might have inherited something else from her mother, thus making Sunshine some being of rare if not unprecedented power. What bothered me was it was all so vague and mysterious; we were given no definitive answers, and by the end we still didn’t know much more than we did at the beginning. It upset me that an author would set up all that worldbuilding and lore and mystery, show us there was this huge world to explore and more story to tell–and then just give us the tip of the iceberg. If she’d written sequels, the vagueness of the first one would be less of a problem–though still annoying–but as far as I can tell, she never intended to write any more about Sunshine, with or without Con. Which makes me wonder why no one on her team sat her down and said, “Robin, hon, I know you’ve got big ideas–and they’re great ideas–but if you want this story to be self-contained, you need to think smaller. If you’re determined to explore all of it, then be prepared for a series to give it due diligence.”