Post by Minuit on Jun 26, 2010 21:57:32 GMT 10
Giantkiller's Bookshelf: The Demon's Lexicon
by rainstormamaya
Sarah Rees Brennan doesn’t believe in gently reeling readers in: she hauls you in with a flash of lightning and a bang of thunder, or, failing that, a sentence which is so inherently peculiar you just have to know more. Exhibit A, the first sentences of The Demon’s Lexicon:
The pipe under the sink was leaking again. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except that Nick kept his favourite sword under the sink.
In two sentences flat, Rees Brennan sets up a jangling contrast between fantasy and real life, introduces the excitingly anti-heroic hero, and shoves innumerable questions into your mind: for example, who is Nick? And what kind of person is he if he has a favourite sword? Also, why does he keep it under the kitchen sink?
These questions are destined to be answered, mostly speaking, in the 322 pages of a book that you won’t be able to put down. Rees Brennan tells the story of a pair of brothers, Nick and Alan, with a rather closer acquaintance with magic than they’re quite comfortable with: they both wear amulets to ward off the demons which are the source of magical power in Rees Brennan’s ’verse, fight demons (Nick with an interesting variety of sharp things, Alan with firearms) and move frequently, in order to prevent being hunted down and killed by the demons and magicians that have been following them around ever since they can remember. The third member of the household is Nick and Alan’s mother, Olivia, who can’t stand the sight of Nick and appears to be insane. Their father is dead, so Alan finds himself caring for a school-hating, anti-social younger brother, and a Nick-hating, mad mother.
As the book opens, Nick, Alan and Olivia have just settled down in Exeter, in a peace destroyed by the arrival of Mae and her younger brother Jamie, with a serious problem. Jamie has been marked by a demon, which means that he’s going to die unless Mae can get him help: she therefore takes him to Nick and Alan. Unfortunately, Alan gets marked too, and now Nick, Alan, Jamie and Mae are all in a race to save their respective siblings from possession and a horrible death.
The book’s pace is good, and Rees Brennan’s trademark mad humour – look at her blog, sarahtales – shines through in sharp one-liners and hilarious scenes. Jamie trying to help Nick cook is possibly my favourite moment of all time, and ends with Mae observing ‘This is excellent. Carry on. I have always dreamed of having handsome men lovingly prepare all my meals’. The plot is clever: the twist at the end nearly made me fall off my chair with sheer did-not-see-that-coming, and the book stands alone pretty well despite the fact that it’s only the first of a trilogy, which I like very much. Rees Brennan accomplishes an interesting balancing act between leaving her readers slavering for more and not having them actually batter down her door because she appears to have left several vital chapters and a lot of closure off the end. I, for one, am thankful. The world Nick lives in is also beautifully drawn: anyone reading Rees Brennan’s blog will have been reading about her research, which involved being mistaken for a mechanics groupie and calling up the Exeter tourism board for advice on dodgy areas of the town, and it paid off. The fantasy elements of the urban fantasy slot into the real-life elements as if they belong there, and the whole is vividly imagined.
However, Rees Brennan’s greatest strengths are undoubtedly her characters and the relationships between them. Nick himself is a remarkable creation: the silent, brooding hero, imagined from inside his own head, and with his actions carried to their logical conclusions. Nick has less empathy than a cheese sandwich, and he isn’t really a nice person, but seeing him from inside his own head we see his own contradictions, motives and confusion, and how the world ought to be perfectly simple and obvious if only idiot people like Alan didn’t introduce affection and other rubbishy concepts into it. Alan’s love for him is beautifully done, as well; it’s clear that Nick is not the only one who is massively protective of his brother. Their relationship is sweet, but not unalloyed: they do bicker, they do get cross with each other, and they have snappy clever conversations that give the book a lot of humour. They could be real siblings. The same is true of Mae and Jamie; they both try to protect each other, but there are hidden lies and tensions between them, and Mae’s attempts to protect Jamie from his own haplessness are a clear portrait of a big sister trying and failing to save a little brother from himself. Rees Brennan also does a masterly job with the love triangle between Nick, Mae, and Alan.
It should be noted that not only can you ship the characters in this book backwards, forwards and sideways, Rees Brennan also appears to be having fun with stereotypes and busting expectations. Every now and then she lives up to them, every now and then she crushes them. The strong, silent type is not seen as the good guy by everyone- Jane trusted Mr. Rochester a hell of a lot more than anyone ever does Nick. One of the characters is disabled, but it’s not allowed to take over the story or his characterisation: it’s just part of who he is. One of the characters is gay, in canon, not just fanon, which is unusual enough in a YA book that I had to go back, and check those little hints suspiciously, because I thought I must just have been reading with slash goggles set to semi-paranoia. The damsel in distress isn’t a girl, and the girl is legitimately kickass without this being overemphasised.
This isn’t to say that the book is perfect, because it isn’t. I thought that Mae lacked development in this book, too much fabulous and too little flaw, but then, it is one part of a trilogy and the next book is going to be about her, so hopefully we’ll get to see more of Mae: more of the flaws and the uncertainties inherent in her relationship with Nick and Alan as well as more of the awesome. I also thought that Rees Brennan’s usual manic humour hadn’t been allowed free rein, and could have used a little more room to sparkle. It didn’t blow me away till the second read, too. But these are relatively minor complaints, and I definitely enjoyed the book despite them.
I give this book 8/10.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!