Book Review: The Demon's Surrender
Sep. 27th, 2011 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI have a strange relationship with Sarah Rees Brennan's Demon's Lexicon trilogy. I read the first two books at top speed, shouting imprecations at their respective narrators ("Nick! Stop being a psychopath! Mae! Stop being ridiculous!") yet somehow coming to the ending filled with the need to read more.
And thus, I ended up ingesting The Demon's Surrender this weekend. In many ways, it's quite of a piece with the other books. The darkness quotient suffers some slippage - our heroes have killed too many magicians without significant repercussions (by which I mean "the death/injury of a named character we actually care about") for the magicians to really seem scary anymore.
The slippage is disappointing artistically, but emotionally I prefer it to the kind of body count the book would rack up if it were really dedicated to the darkness. I don't like stories where half the characters I love die, while the other half end up irreparably damaged, and I'm just as glad it doesn't happen here.
I mean, yes, technically Jamie loses his hand. I keep forgetting this, because being permanently maimed has no effect on his personality whatsoever. Neither does living on a boat full of crazy evil wizards seem to leave psychological scars. Brennan is sufficiently dedicated to her premise to make Nick and Alan messed up little bunnies, but not enough to show the setting twisting Mae and Jamie in similar ways.
Also, Brennan still tends to hammer her themes with a sledgehammer. (Our new narrator, Sin, is all about PERFORMANCE. Because she's a PERFORMER. Got that?)
Speaking of Sin. She's the narrator of a novel by Sarah Rees Brennan, yet - I like her! She's sensible and not psychopathic and her actions barely ever made me want to punch anything! Sin even likes the Ryves brother who actually has emotions, which made me happy, because Alan deserves love even if he is a lying bastard. Sin is also a liar, so they UNDERSTAND each other.
(I am very slightly sad that Mae and Sin didn't fall madly in love - not that I expected it to happen, really, but they do spend lots of time admiring each other and also if they fell in love they could totally co-rule the Goblin Market.)
Pleased as I generally am about the change, there is one - no, there are two - problems with Sin as narrator. The first is that the reader knows about the Secret Plan which ends up saving everyone, and Sin doesn't, which lends a certain dramatic irony to the proceedings. It's hard to get really into the suspense when you know the big twist ending already.
The other problem is that Brennan's story has simply gotten too big for one narrator, so Sin spends a certain amount of time in unlikely eavesdropping expedition. Two narrators would have been a break from the pattern of the previous books, but they could have covered the story more naturally. In particular I think the book would have been enriched by Jamie's POV. Seriously, man. What's it like living on a boat with a bunch of nutty evil magicians? Are you really as psychological intact as you make out at the end of the book?
And thus, I ended up ingesting The Demon's Surrender this weekend. In many ways, it's quite of a piece with the other books. The darkness quotient suffers some slippage - our heroes have killed too many magicians without significant repercussions (by which I mean "the death/injury of a named character we actually care about") for the magicians to really seem scary anymore.
The slippage is disappointing artistically, but emotionally I prefer it to the kind of body count the book would rack up if it were really dedicated to the darkness. I don't like stories where half the characters I love die, while the other half end up irreparably damaged, and I'm just as glad it doesn't happen here.
I mean, yes, technically Jamie loses his hand. I keep forgetting this, because being permanently maimed has no effect on his personality whatsoever. Neither does living on a boat full of crazy evil wizards seem to leave psychological scars. Brennan is sufficiently dedicated to her premise to make Nick and Alan messed up little bunnies, but not enough to show the setting twisting Mae and Jamie in similar ways.
Also, Brennan still tends to hammer her themes with a sledgehammer. (Our new narrator, Sin, is all about PERFORMANCE. Because she's a PERFORMER. Got that?)
Speaking of Sin. She's the narrator of a novel by Sarah Rees Brennan, yet - I like her! She's sensible and not psychopathic and her actions barely ever made me want to punch anything! Sin even likes the Ryves brother who actually has emotions, which made me happy, because Alan deserves love even if he is a lying bastard. Sin is also a liar, so they UNDERSTAND each other.
(I am very slightly sad that Mae and Sin didn't fall madly in love - not that I expected it to happen, really, but they do spend lots of time admiring each other and also if they fell in love they could totally co-rule the Goblin Market.)
Pleased as I generally am about the change, there is one - no, there are two - problems with Sin as narrator. The first is that the reader knows about the Secret Plan which ends up saving everyone, and Sin doesn't, which lends a certain dramatic irony to the proceedings. It's hard to get really into the suspense when you know the big twist ending already.
The other problem is that Brennan's story has simply gotten too big for one narrator, so Sin spends a certain amount of time in unlikely eavesdropping expedition. Two narrators would have been a break from the pattern of the previous books, but they could have covered the story more naturally. In particular I think the book would have been enriched by Jamie's POV. Seriously, man. What's it like living on a boat with a bunch of nutty evil magicians? Are you really as psychological intact as you make out at the end of the book?
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Date: 2011-09-28 02:06 am (UTC)All right!! Clearly a must-read :D
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Date: 2011-09-28 01:00 pm (UTC)My reviews of the Demon's Lexicon books are always so lopsided. I do genuinely enjoy them, but the flaws are so numerous and so easy to articulate, and the enjoyment so nebulous (although more lasting than nebulous enjoyment usually it) that it usually sounds like I hate them.