Sunshine

I am usually 99% not interested in vampire books, but I saw the top of a blurb about this one that made me pause. And then as I paused, I saw that Neil Gaiman liked it, and I read the rest of the blurb. I checked to see if it was in my library's digital collection, and it was. A few minutes later I was reading it, and then I could hardly put it down for the week when I could agonizingly only read it in half hour gulps at night.

I've read a few of Robin McKinley's other books, but haven't found one that really grabbed me until this one. I think one of the things that got me was the juxtaposition of an awesome baker and a vampire teaming up to defeat a great evil. I liked that the world felt believable, and was all the better for not being 100% fleshed out. And, I loved that the vampires were not what they so often are in popular literature, basically humans who now have a nasty blood habit, but they were very alien. They thought differently, acted differently, had different values, and processed reality differently. Though you totally fall in love with Constantine, you never once forget that he and Rae can not be together because of what he is, even though Constantine is a good vampire. I'm never going to be a vampire fic fan, but this book was one of the most gripping reads of my year so far, and I just wish there was a sequel!