How do you feel about
rereading?Re-reading is a BIG DEAL to me. It means that "the journey" was as amazing or more amazing than arriving at the end. It means great writing & unpredictable turns. Sometimes I find life-size decisions buried in a book, choices I made that reflected the books I read.
by Robin McKinley
416 pgs
My Rating: 5.5
This is not a YA book, it's adult. And it's not like Hero and the Crown (Newberry winner) where the first half is a recollection from a turret, this is a dive into another world.
This book pulled me in to reread it after I looked up a passage to quote. The way McKinley creates the vampires to be so un-human is downright creepy. Rae is such an interesting character, a baker for her father-in-law's coffee shop who makes cinnamon rolls the size of your head. The world unfolds as dark and sinister with the historical voodoo wars and half-humans in hiding everywhere. But after creating everything so painstakingly, Rae (Sunshine) must work together with a vampire to escape one and the vampire police are hot on their trail.
From Page 27:
"...which meant that the crossed-legged vampire was behind me... Don't think about it.
I was up on my knees, halfway to my feet, and scrambling for the door before I finished thinking this, even thought I knew you couldn't run away from a vampire. I had forgotten that I was chained to the wall. I hit the end of my chain and fell again. I cried out, as much from fear as paint. I lay sprawled where I struck, waiting for it to be over.
Nothing happened.
Again I thought, Please, gods and angels, let it be over.
Nothing happened.
Despairingly I sat up, hitched myself around to face what was behind me.
It was looking at me. He was looking at me.
The chandelier was set with candles, not electric bulbs, so the light it shed was softer and less definite. Even so he looked bad. His eyes (no: don't look in their eyes) were a kind of gray-green, like stagnant bog water, and his skin was the color of old mushrooms - the sort of mushrooms you find screwed up in a paper bag in the back of the fridge and try to decide if they're worth saving or if you should throw them out now and get it over with. His hair was black, but lank and dull. He would have been tall if he stood up. His shoulders were broad, and his hands and wrists, drooping over his knees, looked huge. He wore no shirt, and his feet, like mine, were bare. This seemed curiously indecent, that he should be half naked. I didn't like it... Oh, right, I thought, good one. The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his mustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the track with the wrong kind of rope. There was a long angry weal across one of the vampire's forearms. Overall he looked... spidery. Predatory. Alien. Nothing human except that he was more or less the right shape."
