Wednesday, March 28, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan





  The Demon's Lexicon is Sarah Rees Brennan's debut novel and the start of her first trilogy.  Readers of this blog (the like, 2 of them) might recognize that name as the author of one of my favorite books, but while The Demon's Lexicon is also YA, it shares basically nothing at all with In Other Lands.  Instead, where that novel was essentially a fantasy romance with comedic elements, The Demon's Lexicon is a YA urban fantasy thriller told from the perspective of a sociopath hero.

  It's still an interesting book that I enjoyed, even though I did, as I suspect most readers do, guess most of the twist reveal extremely early in the book.  It's not a long book (I read this as an audiobook, and it was under 10 hours) but it's a reasonable length such that it never drags.  It's also not a great book either, with it probably spending a bit too much of its span devoted to setup to truly take a leap to that next level.

  Note: While I stated above this is a start to a trilogy, it resolves its plot entirely by the end, and it appears the two sequels focus upon other characters and ideas, so you can treat this as a stand alone.


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
For their entire lives, brothers Nick and Alan Ryves have been on the run.  Their mother used to be part of a Circle of Magicians - people who sacrifice others to Demons in order to obtain greater magical power - who one day fled to their father with several charms highly sought after by the magicians.  As a result, magicians and demons have been after the family for all of the brothers' lives, and since their father sacrificed himself to get them away, the two, along with their insane mother, have moved from house to house, school to school in order to stay away from the attacks.  This isn't made easier by Alan's insistence that the brothers try to help people with magical problems - a feeling Nick doesn't share.  Nick just goes along with it because he wants to help his brother.

But when a brother and sister, Mae and Jamie, show up on their doorstep asking for help, the brothers' routine is quickly disrupted.  Jamie has been marked by a demon, showing that he will soon be possessed and his mind destroyed.  And in the chaos of Jamie and Mae's arrival, Alan also gets marked by a Demon, putting his life in jeopardy as well.  Nick could not care less about Jamie and Mae, but his brother's life is of utmost importance.  And the only way for Nick to save his brother is to kill a Magician from the group that marked Alan - requiring him to stop running and actually go after those hunting them.

But the Circle of Magicians who marked Alan and Jamie is the same one which their mother ran from all those years ago.  And Alan won't consent to having his mark removed without Jamie's being removed as well, doubling Nick's task.  Nick will be forced to confront the most dangerous foes possible in order to save his brother's life.  But when Nick discovers that Alan seems to be lying to Nick about his current plans and past actions....will Nick even want to save his brother if he finds out the truth?
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The Demon's Lexicon is told wholly from the (3rd person) perspective of its main protagonist, Nick.  This wouldn't be that unusual except Nick is wholly and quite clearly a sociopath (and arguably a psychopath) - he doesn't care about other people other than his brother Alan - and even there Nick refuses to admit its out of anything similar to love.  Nick hates to talk about feelings and frequently feels the urge to hit someone - when he joins new schools, he always joins the tough guy crowd, and never makes or even attempts to make friends with any other individuals.  And again, this is our hero!

But the book definitely makes it work, and to be fair, it does make it a different book from most stories out there - again, it's one thing for your hero to be an antihero, but Nick is a full blown sociopath.  It helps that the rest of the world is extremely well done, although that's in large part due to the book spending a large portion of its contents explaining how everything works.  We have Demons, Magicians, magic-markets, magic-dancing, and other fantasy elements all set together alongside a modern world, and it's a pretty interesting world.  I suspect this will make the sequels work a lot better.

The other characters are a mixed bag - probably because we spend our entire time in Nick's head, we don't really get to know them as well as we could.  Mae is an interesting potential love interest - she's strong and determined and not willing to back down in her quest to save Jamie - but Alan is more a puzzle for the plot to solve and Jamie is kind of eh.  And there really aren't any other side characters of serious note.

Again, the ending is satisfying and wraps up the plot of this book entirely (there's a minor sequel hook that looks to be followed up in the next book, but since it doesn't really involve Nick, you could ignore it).  But while it overall wound up working, it was kind of distracting for the book to base a large portion of the plot on a reveal that is at least partially obvious to everyone except the protagonist.

In short, the Demon's Lexicon stands out only due to the sociopathic nature of its hero, but otherwise doesn't quite do enough to truly go from "solid" to "great."  I suspect I'll give the sequel a try based upon the worldbuilding being done here.  But otherwise, this isn't a bad book to read, but I'd recommend a lot of books to start before this one.
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