Monday, January 28, 2019

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



The Demon's Covenant is the sequel to Sarah Rees Brennan's "The Demon's Lexicon" (which I reviewed early last year here) and the middle book in a trilogy.  I liked but didn't love the first book, which featured a really interesting dark urban fantasy (and YA I guess?) world, a really strong (and psychopathic) main character, and a very solid story - but also didn't feature that many developed minor characters and a plot that was relatively predictable in its twists.  Still, as a huge fan of Brennan's very different In Other Lands, I was interested to see if the second book could take a step up now that the worldbuilding has been established, so a year later I picked up this second book as an audiobook.

The result was everything I hoped for - a major step up in both character work, an expansion of the already interesting worldbuilding, and a far less predictable plot that kept me guessing.  The book switches its point-of-view and main character to former side character Mae, and the shift works really well, as well as the snappy often hilarious dialogue produced by some of the more-focused characters.  It still ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but it's a satisfying second book that really takes all the work of the first book and expands on it in a way that made me really happy I kept going with the series, and I will be finishing the trilogy probably pretty soon.

Note: I read this book as an audiobook and the reader is very good.  That said, the third book is not in audiobook format so if you're looking to read an entire series in the format, you obviously shouldn't do that with this series.  
----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------
A few months have passed since Mae Crawford helped brothers Alan and Nick defeat the Obsidian Circle and save both her brother Jamie and Alan from demonic possession.  After being Grounded for her part in running away from home, Mae goes out her first night since only to find Jamie - the brother she has always loved and protected - being courted by the new leader of the Obsidian Circle's magicians, Gerald, to join the Circle in their murderous demon-channeling ways.  And to make it worse - Jamie has clearly been seeing Gerald for a while....and Jamie kept it secret from her.

Not knowing what to do, Mae calls Alan and Nick for help. But Mae finds herself torn between wanting a normal non-magical life as a high school teen and wanting to engross herself in the magical world Alan and Nick once showed her - the tricks, the dancing, and definitely the Goblin Market.  Yet she may not have a choice in choosing which world she wants, as Gerald's desires are for more than just her brother, but to obtain Nick's demonic power for himself.  And to make it worse, Alan is regretting his choice to set Nick free,and might be willing to help Gerald out.....

As the only person in this drama with no magical power and who was not at all raised in this life, Mae is seemingly the least equipped to find a solution to everything...but it will fall to her to lead everyone and to come up with a plan that can prevent the worst from coming to pass...
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The Demon's Lexicon was told from the perspective of Nick, an utter psychopath barely restrained by his love for his brother  Alan (for reasons that became apparent in that book), and one who has been involved in the dangerous world of magic from its inception.  This book switches the perspective of the book to Mae, who grew up a normal girl until being forced into learning about the world of magic from Nick and Alan.  Nick was utterly capable of handling himself - too much so given his personality issues - and his issues stemmed from a lack of knowledge about himself and the world - a lack of knowledge he wasn't even aware of.  Mae on the other hand is the opposite - uncertain about everything, wishing she had more control over her life, and fully aware of how limited she is by her lack of knowledge about the magical world.

And she's such a great character to serve as our protagonist.  Again, those qualities may make her a bit more conventional heroine than Nick, but the book never takes her in directions that you'd think a typical heroine of this type would go - with her obtaining magic of her own to deal with the problems; this never actually happens, and Mae has to resort to her own human abilities and thinking to try and find a solution, and what she finds is both interesting and different.  And Mae's uncertainty about herself, about whether she ought to be involved in this magical world at all, about how she can protect Jamie while still having a life herself, are really easy to empathize with and make the story flow rather well.

I complained in my review of The Demon's Lexicon that the side characters weren't well developed, and that's certainly not the case here.  Jamie, one of those characters, is a much more well rounded and interesting character here, reminding me an awful lot of Elliot from Brennan's In Other Lands, as the always sarcastic and oft-hilarious geek who's trying to find a way to do things on his own rather than depending on everyone else.  He's truly great and I hope to see more of him in the trilogy's finale. Nick and Alan remain excellent interesting characters from the first book, and Sin from the Goblin Market gets further fleshing out as another interesting side heroine (just in time for her to be the next book's protagonist, from the description).  And the two most important new characters - Seb, Mae's alternate love interest, and Annabelle (sp?), Mae and Jamie's mother, both bring depth and interesting aspects to the story.

And the plot is excellent. While one of the twists of the story is again predictable - well, to be fair, I was expecting the twist regarding that character to be one of two possible twists, and the book surprised me by using BOTH twists haha- the overall arc is not, with the resolution being frantic, incredibly unpredictable and very satisfying.  And the story leading up to that conclusion works rather well, with the story moving along at a decent pace....mostly.

If I have complaints about this book, it's that things move at a slightly slowish pace around the middle, where the eventual climax is pretty clear early on and it takes a while to actually occur.  And while the ending is a satisfying way for everything to conclude in this book, unlike the first book, this one DOES end in a cliffhanger, so a reader who expected the trilogy to be three stand-alones in the same world will be a little bit disappointed.

Still, enjoyed this quite a bit, and already took book 3 out from the library.
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