"Powerful vampire tale"

Less than a decade ago, the human and vampire population went to war with the result that millions of humans died and the geo-political structure of the world changed. Rae "Sunshine" Seddon loves living a mundane life baking delicious confections for her family's café in New Arcadia.

She pretends that vampires only in exist in the pages of a book until she goes out one night to her grandmother's deserted cabin. When she wakes up, she is surrounded by a group of vampires. They take her to a deserted mansion where a vampire is manacled to the wall. The vampires chain her to a wall close to Con and offer her up to him as a meal. He refuses to take her blood and Sunshine draws upon the powers she inherited from her father to escape before the vampires come back. Sunshine has suppressed memories of working spells and transmuting for years. Suddenly she is thrust into an unheard of alliance with a vampire to defeat his species that had taken them prisoner.

The protagonist experiences one trauma after another as she comes to terms with her attraction to and trust of a vampire while learning to use the powers she has forgotten she possessed. Robin McKinley is an excellent world builder and innovative storyteller who insures her readers believe that vampires actually exist and control large parts of the world's geography and financial wealth. Fans of Laurell K. Hamilton and Tanya Huff will not want to miss the very special SUNSHINE.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted September 15, 2003

Summary

A new direction for an already successful fantasy author. They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion-within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight. She knows that it is a vampire. She knows that she's to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet, when light breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is he who needs her to help him survive the day...