Sunshine (novel): Difference between revisions

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Unfortunately for the vampires, Sunshine's father was a sorcerer, and her grandmother taught her to use her heritage to transmute, which lets her make a key for her shackles. ''Really'' unfortunately for the vampires, Sunshine's world has [[Elemental Powers|elemental magic]], and [[Meaningful Name|Sunshine]]'s element is, well...such that even though she escapes during the day, she can take Constantine with her.

The rest of the book is concerned with fallout from her kidnapping (including a [[Wound That Will Not Heal]] Without Vampiric [[Blood Magic]], the intense interest of the [[Occult Detective|Special Other Forces]], and [[Faking Amnesia|partially-faked PTSD]]), and also with the fact that the gang of vampires who kidnapped her is run by a master vampire, Beauregard, who does not take their escape well. Fortunately for Sunshine, Constantine comes back and helps her deal with the problems, and being a mage with an affinity for sunshine does make it easier to kill the bad vampires, as well as save the good ones...

 

* [[Badass Biker]]: Mel

* [[Blood on These Hands]]: After {{spoiler|ripping Beauregard's heart out with her bare hands}}, Sunshine is convinced that they are irrevocably "dirty."

** Note that it's not the blood that's the problem {{spoiler|(she had already killed dozens of vampires with her bare hands)}}, rather the sense of corruption and evil that came with it.

* [[The Cavalry Arrives Late]]: And puts them under arrest.

* [[Compelling Voice]]: The media puts an electronic effect onto vampire voices, just in case it turns out they can do this.

* [[Cool Old Lady]]: Sunshine's landlady Miss Yolande.

* [[Crapsack World]]: "I think the [myth of the] phoenix has at least a fifty-fifty chance of being true, because it's nasty. What this world doesn't have is the three-wishes, go-to-the-ball-and-meet-your-prince, happily-ever-after kind of magic. We have all the mangling and malevolent kinds. Who ''invented'' this system?"

* [[Disappeared Dad]]: Sunshine's father, Onyx Blaise, mysteriously disappeared many years ago. No one knows what happened to him. No, we don't find out, either.

* [[Emotion Eater]]: Dabbled with; vampires can draw sustenance from tears in place of blood, although it is weaker.

* [[The End of the World as We Know It]]: Averted during the Voodoo Wars (fifteen years before the book starts) but expected to happen within a century after the book ends.

* [[Expospeak]]: Sunshine often digresses from the main plot to explain details of her world--we find out, for example, that the man who invented the test for demonic ancestry that SOF uses discovered quickly that he himself was a partblood, quit before he could be fired, and spent the rest of his life breeding roses.

* [[Fantastic Racism]]: Humans with demon ancestors (partbloods) tend to have a lot of trouble getting and holding jobs or promotions.

* [[Film the Hand]]: Sunshine does this to avoid being filmed by an overly zealous reporter. At the time, she didn't know whether vampires would be watching the broadcast, and she was still desperately [[Refusal of the Call|trying to make things go back to normal]].

** Other vampires torture humans in order to taste the fear in their blood when they finally get around to eating them. Constantine's "friendliness" means that he doesn't play with his food before eating. He CAN eat deer, but whether he still sometimes eats humans as well is not revealed.

** This behavior has led Constantine to be one of the strongest vampires around, since he has no problems moving around (other vampires his age have become so corrupted over the years that they can't come outside AT ALL, even during the darkest nights, because the faint light from the stars is enough to harm them).

* [[Just Before the End]]

* [[Lady in Red]]: Sunshine is dressed in a blood-red dress before being given to Constantine.

** Stake them through the heart. This is harder in this universe than in [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|some others]], because vampires are extremely fast, and because they have fully-functional rib cages and breastbones protecting the heart. Also? The stake ''has got to be'' wood or wrought iron, preferably wood from an apple tree with mistletoe growing on it. Try with anything else, and you're dead.

** Be a mage whose affinity is for sunlight, in which case the rib cage/breastbone is somehow less of a problem, and the "stake" can be a table knife, a jacknife, or {{spoiler|bare hands}}.

* [[Meaningful Name|Meaningful Nickname]]: Sunshine.

* [[Never Was This Universe]]

* [[No Ending]]: The book ends with several secondary threads [[Left Hanging]] ([[Disappeared Dad|the disappearance of the Blaises]], Mel's [[Dark and Troubled Past]], the goddess of pain, Sunshine and Constantine's [[No Romantic Resolution|romance]], etc.), but the main plot points (the threat of Beauregard and Sunshine's struggle to accept magic as a part of herself) are more or less resolved. It's actually a great ending, but there's plenty of material for a [[Development Hell|sequel]].

* [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]]: "The goddess of pain," who, ironically enough is completely correct in suspecting Con to be a vampire.

* [[Occult Detective]]: Special Other Forces (SOF). As befits [[The Unmasqued World]], they're a fully-funded non-secret government agency described as cops for the nonhumans.

* [[Our Vampires Are Different]]: Vampires are much less human in ''Sunshine'' than in most works, and they get progressively less human as they age. This process apparently is much slower for [[Friendly Neighborhood Vampires]] than for the other kind: Constantine can deal with twilight and moonlight, and most vampires his age can't.

* [[Refusal of the Call]]: Sunshine doesn't really want to be a SOF agent, but she can off suckers with common household utensils, and they want her out there doing it.

* [[Trademark Favorite Food]]: Favorite dish; Sunshine's specialty is "cinnamon rolls as big as your head."

* [[The Unmasqued World]]

* [[Wound That Will Not Heal]]: Sunshine gets one. It takes [[Blood Magic]] to heal it.

* [[Your Cheating Heart]]: Sunshine has a boyfriend the entire book. Still doesn't keep her from {{spoiler|having some pretty intense moments, including something that could only count as foreplay, with Con.}}

 

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[[Category:Vampire Fiction]]

[[Category:Fantasy Literature]]