The Rain Demons, Part III

This review is a follow-up to The Rain Demons and The Rain, Demons Part II

Paige McKenzie with Nancy Ohlin, The Sacrifice of Sunshine Girl

Volume Two of this trilogy ended with our protagonist, Sunshine Griffith, literally plunging into Hell. She made the decision to relinquish herself to save all reality, then realized, falling headlong into the abyss, that this false offering would actually make things worse. So the conclusion of the trilogy begins with Sunshine and her mentors battling her way back out again. She escapes Hell, only to find herself trapped in an even worse inferno, High School.

I read the first two volumes of Paige McKenzie’s dark fantasy illuminated by Joseph Campbell, whose heroic journey has permeated our consciousness of storytelling so thoroughly that it’s become instinctive. But I read the third volume just after reading Sady Doyle, which changes my attitudes. Because McKenzie is a woman, writing about an adolescent girl’s adulthood rites, there’s something innately different here, something Campbell, with his Jungian certainties, would never have considered. And it’s terrifying.

At its most basic, this novel completes Sunshine’s transition. She has to accept her human nature, which in this case is superhuman. She literally controls the power of life and death, a decision made for her by birth. But her adulthood rites are colored by forces that preceded her: a father who cannot accept his daughter is growing up, the battle between the true and false mothers, and the ordinary teenage desire to be normal.

Sunshine’s father is a moralistic force looming over her choices. He’s eager to train her in responsibilities necessary to fulfill her supernatural inheritance. But he also repeatedly denies her information necessary to make responsible decisions. It’s never the right time, in his mind. Like fathers throughout history, he desperately wants to preserve her childlike innocence, because in his mind, she’s permanently adolescent, never a grown-up. Even when, in the clinch, she demonstrates her superpowered adulthood.

Campbell divided fathers into good and evil. McKenzie does that instead for mothers. Sunshine has her biological mother, Helena, an angry force of nature that wants to “destroy” the little girl to preserve her adult illusions. Initially this means literally destroying her. Later she metaphorically destroys the child by divulging the information her father isn’t ready to share. Helena is literally queen among her supernatural race, and thus represents the social forces arrayed against adolescence.

Paige McKenzie

Against Helena, Sunshine has her “real” mother, Kat, who actually raised Sunshine. Like Sunshine’s father, Kat sometimes has difficulty with her daughter’s imminent adulthood, but instead of squelching it, she offers guidance. She’s the only parent who never withholds either information of support, though she’s often the parent with the least information to share. Rather than facts, she offers Sunshine courage, permitting her to act, even in the absence of facts, which are painfully rare.

These three parental forces enact, between them, a war to define Sunshine’s adult identity. This conflict unfolds against a more transcendent battle, where forces older than humanity struggle to control Earth’s future. Sunshine’s parents have told her that she’s the child of prophecy, the unique being with power to resolve this battle quickly. Imagine Sunshine’s shock when she meets an impossible boy, one of her own kind, who could take this burden off her completely.

Sady Doyle divides women in horror fiction into three categories: daughters, wives, and mothers. But Doyle reviews women through men’s eyes. Because McKenzie writes, as a young woman, for women, there’s a fourth and category: “best friend” and “mean girl.” The conflicting peer forces influence how Sunshine approaches adulthood. Growing up means, to some extent, conforming; will Sunshine choose conformity from loyalty and encouragement, or fear and humiliation? Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference.

This is obviously the conclusion of a trilogy, and the final volume is often a disappointment. Even George Lucas lacked the courage to embrace the bittersweet conclusion he first wrote himself. Audiences who’ve stuck with the trilogy thus far will notice some places where McKenzie flinches from the hurdles she’s set herself (and they’d better stick with the trilogy, because you can’t read these books out of sequence). This novel could’ve been a bit stronger.

But it also completes Sunshine’s character arc thoroughly and with a taut pace. Like anyone’s adulthood rites, Sunshine is immensely powerful, but also shapeless, and must decide whose advice she can trust. Sometimes she chooses wrong; sometimes she chooses right, for the wrong reason. Others pay for her mistakes. But in the clinch, she steps up and embraces her destiny, vanquishing the enemy herself. To our relief, she becomes the adult she needs to be.