Sunshine, Robin McKinley

This was one of my favourite books when I was in my mid-teens, and I was very curious to see how I found it this time. Sunshine is a fairly ordinary woman, or so it seems, working as a baker at her family’s cafe, ducking out on family night because she’s restless. It takes a while for the post-apocalyptic, alternative world to become fully apparent: this is a world of supernatural creatures, magic-users, wards, and cops who are out to stake vampires and deal with any threats from the Others. Part of that sinks in because Sunshine is very quickly kidnapped by vampires, of course, but the rest of it trickles through in a fairly organic way.

Kidnapped by vampires? Oh yes. At the very start of the book, Sunshine finds herself kidnapped and taken to an old abandoned house, near a ‘bad spot’, where a chained vampire waits. Of course, she expects to be dinner immediately — that’s what humans expect from vampires — but it doesn’t quite work that way, and she finds herself drawn into an odd alliance with a creature who should be a mortal enemy. It feels beautifully done — their odd reliance on each other, while they still don’t fully understand or perhaps trust each other.

And of course, Sunshine isn’t actually just a normal woman. Her magic is based on sunlight, and it’s been growing within her silently since she was a child. Her escape with the vampire Con is just the beginning.

I really enjoy that Sunshine isn’t very heroic. She’s scared and she wants to bury her head in the sand. Deeply. She wants to knead bread and bake cakes and feed people, mostly, and having to be a hero and hang out with vampires is an unfortunate roadblock. She doesn’t want to use her magic, though she fears not being able to. She’s not brave, she’s just doing what she has to, step by step. She could be all gungho and ready to slay, but we have plenty of women like that in fiction now. One who is a baker and also a reluctant badass is a little bit different.

There’s so much untold about this world, so much I’d love to know. Mel’s background. What happened during the wars. What happened before. What happened to Sunshine’s father, and Sunshine’s grandmother. More about the cops with whom Sunshine has a fragile alliance. More about other types of magic user, more about Yolande, more about what happens to Sunshine and to Con…

But at the same time, there’s something rather enjoyable about the fact that it’s a one-and-done (thus far). You can imagine so much for yourself, and you never have to be disappointed. There’s so much potential.

Rating: 4/5

Rose Daughter, Robin McKinley

Robin McKinley has written two rather different adaptations of Beauty and the Beast; this is the second, and perhaps more sophisticated one. There’s much more magic in this one, and more of a developed fantasy world for the story to take place in. It also departs from the basic story much more, introducing additional characters and motivations. While it makes for a much more rounded world, I found myself much less interested in it! Sometimes simplicity can work better, and this ended up feeling rather fussy to me. The whole tangle has to be explained at the end by a character who has barely previously appeared, and that also feels clumsy.

There is one aspect of this I prefer to other tellings, and that’s the fact that the Beast remains a Beast. The transformation to a man seems weird sometimes — or rather, the transformation to a man followed by an immediate marriage, especially when Beauty is described as being confused by and even timid by her transformed partner. It seems to make more sense this way, at least for this particular version of the story.

In any case, I’m glad I reread this, but I probably won’t do so again. I far prefer McKinley’s first version, Beauty!

Rating: 3/5

Beauty, Robin McKinley

Robin McKinley has written two retellings of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale; this one is the closest to what you might think of as the classic story (i.e. actually the version immortalised by Disney, albeit with touches like including Beauty’s sisters), and is also the youngest in terms of how it’s written. It follows the traditional set-up, and the retelling mostly relies on filling in the gaps — characterising Beauty’s sisters, playing with irony (Beauty is not, in fact, beautiful — at least not at first, though somehow she becomes very pretty over the course of the book), creating several secondary love stories — rather than being wildly transformative or creating a rich world. Rose Daughter… well, I’ll come to that when I’ve finished that reread!

I find it very enjoyable, partly because it’s kept fairly simple, and because I enjoy the characters. It’s an undemanding read, but it’s fun.

Rating: 4/5

Chalice, Robin McKinley

I don’t know why I keep coming back to this book — one I originally gave just three stars — but I think this is probably the fourth time I’ve read it. This time, because I saw a copy for three euros in Dublin and just had to, had to, had to; up to now, I didn’t actually have my own copy, which you can imagine was annoying and of course I had to rectify it.

I think the thing is, it’s such a warm story. Mirasol and the Master’s relationship is so tentative, so careful; their attempts to reach out to the land they’re bound to and heal the things that have happened are so conscientious, untutored, sometimes even desperate, and yet they never give up. And I love all the domestic details: the honey, the woodrights, all the sensory stuff that comes with the honey… And the idea of the Chalice, both the office and the object, her duty to bind the Circle and all the little details of how to do that.

I also think it’s a very hopeful book, in the same sort of way as The Goblin Emperor or Uprooted, other books I’ve liked more recently. Okay, there is a conflict, but the outcome is almost totally positive, and the main characters seek as much as they can to avoid conflict. It’s gentle, calm, and thus calming.

I imagine I’ll reread it again sometime in the future.

Rating: 5/5

The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley

Wow, I don’t know why I didn’t really like The Hero and the Crown very much on the first go round. It’s full of all the kinds of things I love: love stories that aren’t just simple love-at-first-sight or we-grew-up-together-and-now-we’re-in-love, but something more complicated that that; a world with a history and a future, outside of what we’ve got; a heroine who works through flaws and barriers to become a hero. And the last sentences — ach! Lovely.

It’s not some straightforward children’s story in which a heroine goes forth and slays a dragon. That happens, but it happens as part of a longer journey: the dragon isn’t the end, but only really the beginning of Aerin’s journey. It doesn’t solve all her issues and let her go home unscathed, unchanged, to a court that’s suddenly ready to accept her. Aerin’s story is harder than that.

Looking at my old review/notes on this, I was disappointed by the worldbuilding — which I think is funny, because though it’s subtle, there’s plenty here. The surka, the crown, old heroes, Luthe’s background, why the animals follow Aerin: there’s so much that doesn’t get elucidated, but remains there for you to turn over and wonder at. McKinley doesn’t give you all the answers about her world in one go, and I doubt that The Blue Sword will answer all of it either. Maybe you have to do a little more work to really appreciate the history of the world, because McKinley does nothing so clumsy as sit you in a history lesson with Aerin to learn about it.

Overall, given the subtlety of parts of this and the wistfulness of the love stories, I’m not entirely sure how I’d have taken this as a child. It may be a prime example of a story that works on two levels: Aerin waving her sword around for younger readers, winning the day with her prowess, while the older readers might taste more of the bittersweetness of her immortality and her twin-nature.

Rating; 4/5