Title: Sunshine
Author: Robin McKinley
Publisher: Jove Books
Source: Columbus Metropolitan Library
They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion-within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight.
She knows that it is a vampire.
She knows that she’s to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet, when light breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is he who needs her to help him survive the day…
This came up as a book recommendation in a conversation about funny fantasy books.
It wasn’t a laugh a minute like I was expecting but it did have humor. It breaks from many urban fantasy formulas shortly after the beginning. It makes a declarative statement but it’s not until page 12 that you find out what happened to bring on the next chain of events. And even then it goes into more backstory.
Nothing ever reads like an info-dump. Told in the first person point of view, the main character has a strong voice and the book reads like a tale. A very long tale of what happened to her after she went to a lake by herself one Monday evening.
You’re in the main character’s head a lot. And McKinley never breaks from that.
It’s refreshing to have a novel with loose ends and to know there isn’t a sequel in the works. This is a world where magic is in the open and I can see lots of possible short stories about other characters (and the professions they have in this world).