I’ve been trying to remember how I found out about and decided to read this book, but I can’t for sure. I think it was just following lists on Amazon, maybe.

Anyhow, the cover of this book is littered with praises from various authors and publications. So, it was certainly promising on the outside.

However, this book never really quite clicked with me. It came close, but never went all the way.

The setting of Sunshine is an alternate reality/future where demons, were-creatures and vampires (collectively know as Others) are slowly taking over. In the not too distant past a major war was fought against them which was basically a draw, but which resulted in widespread devastation including the creation of ‘bad spots’ – areas were even Others found it too uncomfortable to enter.

The book is first person and told from the perspective of Rae Seddon, aka Sunshine. Sunshine is a baker, and, as it turns out, the daughter of a powerful sorcerer. Early on in the story she is captured by vampires and held along with another vampire, Constantine (yes, very original), or Con, or, less often, Connie.

Sunshine is self-admittedly a coward and would much rather ignore the rest of world in favor of her kitchen. This is fine, and given the world that McKinley has created, understandable. That said, her self-indulgent cowardice and avoidance really got old for me – so I was never really very emotionally involved in Sunshine.

That wouldn’t normally be a problem, but I didn’t really feel much empathy for the rest of the characters either. With the exception of Con and a couple others, they stay pretty well in the background. None were ever threatened by the Others, and aside from her kidnapping, Sunshine was never really threatened by them either – she and Con sought them out. There was the statement by a Special Other Forces agent that the Others will be effectively running the world in under a century, which is described as pessimistic by Sunshine’s grandmother (also a Sorcerer). As a result, I never really felt any sense of genuine urgency to their actions.

The other big problem I had was the annoying segues into world-building right in the middle of a fairly fast-paced scene, and these could be paragraphs to pages long. For me this really disrupted the flow and pacing.

My issues with the world-building hurting the pacing are ironic in a way, since the world is one of the things I really did like. Obviously, from the detail McKinley gives us, it’s richly imagined (though nothing as amazing as Miéville’s Bas-Lag) and she’s thought a lot about the details of it.

Overall, I can’t say I’d recommend this highly. If someone was very into vampire novels and had already read the usual suspects, then sure, give this a whirl, but otherwise, read something by Anne Rice or Laurell Hamilton.