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Sunshine
Book
2003
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Fiction/Biography Profile
Awards
2004 - Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature winner
2003 - Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for Best Mainstream -- Best Vampire Romance nominee
Characters
Sunshine (Female), Works in a coffeehouse owned by her stepfather
Con (Male), Vampire, Interested in hearing stories about daylight folk
Genre
Fiction
Fantasy
Horror
Topics
Vampires
Kidnapping
Captivity
Storytelling
Secrets
Time Period
Large Cover Image
Trade Reviews
Publishers Weekly Review
Buffyesque baker Rae "Sunshine" Seddon meets Count Dracula's hunky Byronic cousin in Newbery-Award-winner McKinley's first adult-and-then-some romp through the darkling streets of a spooky post-Voodoo Wars world. Now that human cities have been decimated, the vampiric elite holds one-fifth of the world's capital, threatening to control all the earth in less than 100 years, unless human SOFs (Special Other Forces) can hold them at bay by recruiting Sunshine, daughter of legendary sorcerer Onyx Blaise. As breathlessly narrated by Sunshine herself, the Cinnamon Roll Queen of Charlie's Coffeehouse, in the inchoate idiom of Britney, J. Lo and the Spice Girls, Sunshine's coming-of-magical-age launches when she is swarmed by noiseless vampires one night and chained in a decrepit ballroom as an entr?e for mysterious, magnetic, half-starved Constantine, a powerful vampire whose mortal enemy Bo (short for Beauregard) shackled him there to perish slowly from daylight and deprivation. Most of the charm of this long venture into magic maturation derives from McKinley's keen ear and sensitive atmospherics, deft characterizations and clever juxtapositions of reality and the supernatural that might, just might, be lurking out there in "bad spots" right around a creepy urban corner or next to a deserted lake cabin. McKinley knows very well-and makes her readers believe-that "the insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are." (Oct. 7) Forecast: The 21st-century girl chatter juxtaposed with the book's 19th-century brooding hero should help turn out the Buffy crowd in droves on the national author tour. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Rae Seddon, nicknamed Sunshine, lives a quiet life working at her stepfather's bakery. One night, she goes out to the lake for some peace and quiet. Big mistake. She is set upon by vampires, who take her to an old mansion. They chain her to the wall and leave her with another vampire, who is also chained. But the vampire, Constantine, doesn't try to eat her. Instead, he implores her to tell him stories to keep them both sane. Realizing she will have to save herself, Sunshine calls on the long-forgotten powers her grandmother began to cultivate in her when she was a child. She transforms her pocketknife into a key and unchains herself--and Constantine. Surprised, he agrees to flee with her when she offers to protect him from the sun with magic. They escape back to town, but Constantine knows his enemies won't be far behind, which means that he and Sunshine will have to face them together. A luminous, entrancing novel with an enthralling pair of characters at its heart. --Kristine Huntley Copyright 2003 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Mild-mannered vampire fantasy from Britisher McKinley, author of whimsical, rather talky rewrites of classic fairytales for young adults. The lurid copy and cover art of this American edition of McKinley's first for grownups (inaccurately described as "A Mesmerizing Novel of Supernatural Desire") are wildly at odds with the story itself: Sunshine, a cheerful chatterbox with a touch of magic in her soul, is very much at home in a near-future that's as cozy as can be, though inhabited by various Other Folk, including werewolves, Supergreens (ecology-minded supernatural beings of ordinary mien), assorted demons, sprites, and fallen angels. It's considered pretty cool to be a fallen angel, but the global council has decreed that Weres must take drugs to control their more beastly behavior, and being a vampire is technically illegal. Yet, after the Voodoo Wars, they all seem to get along well enough. Sunshine makes cinnamon buns for Charlie's Coffeehouse, and her mother (married to Charlie after a difficult divorce from Sunshine's dad) handles the administrative side of things. (Yes, Mum is Mom, and they serve coffee, not tea, but most of the details are recognizably British.) Sunshine is both intrigued and repelled by vampires, so when one abducts her and chains her up in a spooky mansion, she doesn't know what to think. But her vampire, Con, seems not too terribly bloodthirsty and even genuinely interested in a Creature of the Daylight, so Sunshine explains the coffeehouse routine once more, then tells him a fairytale, and, lo and behold, by morning she's escaped her shackles and lived to tell the story--several times (though McKinley has a light touch, everything seems to get repeated, to all and sundry). Will this mortal but magical girl betray the vampire she's befriended to government agents? An intriguing mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Harry Potter-ish characterization. Mostly for teenagers who don't trip over words like "eschatology," and maybe some older fantasy devotees as well. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Summary
"Sunshine" is what everyone calls her. She works long hours in her family's coffeehouse, making her famous "Cinnamon Rolls as Big as Your Head," Bitter Chocolate Death, Caramel Cataclysm, and other sugar-shock specials that keep the customers coming. She's happy in her bakery--which her stepfather built specially for her--but sometimes she feels that she should have life outside the coffeehouse.

One evening she drives out to the lake to get away from her family, to be alone. There hasn't been any trouble at the lake for years.

But there is trouble that night for Sunshine. She is abducted by a gang of vampires who shackle her to the wall of an abandoned mansion, within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight. Sunshine knows that he is a vampire and that she is to be his dinner. Yet when dawn breaks he has not attempted to harm her.

And now he needs her help to survive the day...

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