Rae “Sunshine” Seddon, a baker at a coffee shop, strays from relative safety and is caught by vampires. She is thrown into a room with a chained and hungry vampire, Constantine, whom they taunt and torture on the orders of her master. Rae rediscovers her magical talent and frees both her and her new partner. That’s just the beginning, because Bo, Constantine’s archenemy, won’t give up until he destroys them both.
In the future, there is something called “Voodoo Wars”, a conflict between humanity and the “Others” (demons, shapeshifters, vampires – vampires are the strongest and the main problem). Many humans die in that conflict, and the survivors struggle to survive as powerful vampires try to rule the world.
One of the results of this conflict is that “bad spots”, places where black magic thrives, appear with increasing frequency, reducing the space uninhabitable for humans and making it even more difficult for humans to survive. As one of the characters says, “Others are winning”, they just can’t say that openly to the general human population.
This world is not what a reader would normally expect from a place populated by shapeshifters and vampires, and that’s where McKinley’s humor comes into play. For example, the most common shapeshifters are not werewolves, but chickenmen, which makes shapeshifters unwilling to admit what they are. As for vampires, they’re not sexy, they’re physically repulsive to humans. While vampires have so much control over their bodies that they “always can,” Rae asks, “Who would want a boyfriend with a constant boner?”
What I found most captivating in this novel was the relationship between Rae and Constantine. Rae is early sympathetic to Constantine’s position, because “nobody likes thugs”, and Constantine is not your usual vampire assassin. They’re bewildered by each other, Rae by a vampire who doesn’t act like a monster but a nice being, and Constantine by having a human ally he needs to protect, something he’s not used to.
Their relationship grows, often to their bewilderment. Even though Constantine still looks ugly to Rae (we don’t know what Rae looks to him), the sexual tension builds between them, and it’s pretty believable. They continue to protect and help each other, each with strengths and weaknesses, and their friendship grows, a friendship that doesn’t end when the enemy is defeated, and the reader wonders what will happen next between them.
Intelligently written, humorous, at times fairy tale-like, Sunshine is a beautiful novel that leaps from stereotypes and builds the world and characters of its own. Despite many reader requests, the author has yet to write a sequel, but one can always wait.