The Demon’s Covenant, by Sarah Rees Brennan
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.
Some of you may remember me squeeing like a schoolgirl last year when The Demon’s Lexicon came out. This was a clever, snarky and surprisingly dark YA urban fantasy that was one of the hottest debut releases last year. Told from the intense POV of mysterious, damaged demon-hunting teenager Nick Ryves, it introduced some compelling characters, some gorgeous ‘magic hidden in the everyday’ worldbuilding and a whole lot of ‘quote this aloud to annoy friends and relatives’ dialogue.
The entire story of that first novel revolved around Nick and the awful discoveries he made about his family history, and while it was obvious that a series had been launched, it was also hard to see how Sarah Rees Brennan was going to follow through. Cleverly, she changed protagonists, continuing Nick’s story through the eyes of someone close to him, but with different perspective and priorities.
I wasn’t that much of a fan of Mae in the first book - she seemed cute and funny, but she was it seemed doomed to be ‘the Girl’ whose role was to pull the awesome demon-hunting brothers into the plot (her gay brother Jamie being the damsel to be rescued) and then to come romantically between said demon-hunting brothers. She was also feisty. I state this without comment. Added to this was the problem that we only saw her through Nick’s eyes, and for the most part he saw her as annoying, as a threat to his relationship with his brother, and occasionally as kind of hot.
As a protagonist, however, I have to say Mae completely rocks the house. We get to see so much more of who she is as a sister, daughter, friend and general awesome person. She wears impossibly cool t-shirts with classic feminist quotes (okay in this printable society anything is possible), she stands up for her brother when he gets bullied, and oh yes, she leads an army, though that comes later…
(I am attempting minimal spoilers since I know Kaia will read this despite not having the book yet, the wench, and am also trying really hard not to spoil Book 1 because many of you only buy books after I tell you about them, which is very strange. Possibly you should now forget the thing I said about the army)
I enjoyed Mae’s narrative voice very much - even if it is unreasonably fantastic that all four of the main characters should have quite such funny and clever dialogue, I don’t care, it is like icecream. I also liked that the new perspective meant that I got to see all the characters through a different light - Alan, taken away from Nick’s fierce loyalty, has many more sides to him, not all of them nice. Jamie, who I (like Nick) was mostly bored by in the first book (pretty much in the first book I, like Nick, was bored by anyone who wasn’t Nick, luckily there was lots of Nick in Book 1) not only gets shown in a better and more interesting light through Mae’s eyes, but also has a far more important role to play than just being in danger a lot. He, like everyone else in the story, crushes on the wrong person and is crushed on by the wrong person, but we also get to find out a lot more about who he is as a person and how magic can be very, very dangerous in the hands of the new and naive user.
One of my favourite characters in the book, and a totaly surprise to me, was Annabel, Mae and Jamie’s mother. The Demon books have been awfully hard on parents as a rule, they tending towards being evil, neglectful and/or doomed, but Brennan is awfully clever with Annabel. She begins as a very remote ice queen of a mother, far more concerned with her society friends than with her frankly odd children. But slowly she unfolds as a real person, one who could have done a lot better as a parent, but also could have done a lot worse, and her story arc becomes a vital question of whether she is going to be an ally or an enemy when she discovers the kinds of magical shenanigans that Jamie is mixed up in. I loved every scene she was in. Of course I pretty much loved every scene in the book, so take that with as many grains of salt as you like. The scene in which she and Nick engage in some swordplay is my favourite, though - completely marvellous - and I love how she defends the very high heeled shoes that are so often mocked in stories like this.
Speaking of stories like this, one of the best and most interesting things about Mae as a protagonist is her lack of specialness. She is not a magician, a specially trained demon-hunter, or indeed anything that belongs to the “other” world she has so recently discovered. This is important for two reasons: 1) it is her job to prove to her brother that non-magical people will not automatically envy and despise those who have magic, so that he won’t go off with the evil people and do evil things out of a pre-emptive sense of betrayal and fear and 2) she really really really has to find a way to be useful to the story and to her friends, despite her lack of special abilities.
And she does. She helps Alan with her dancing, Nick by offering him the lessons he needs (those of you who have read Book 1 may notice how deeply I am straining here not to spoil its secrets), Jamie with her love and support, Seb (her new love interest) who desperately needs a friend, and even her mother, who is going to have a pretty steep learning curve. Then there’s the Goblin Market, the part of the magical world that Mae loves most, and her budding friendship with the dancer Sin - can it offer what Mae has been looking for?
While we’re at it, let’s talk romance. Mae has three love interests in this book, all completely wrong for her, but one is more wrong than the others and oh dear I ship them so badly. I love the message that she gives in the book - that true love isn’t something that’s even on her radar, and therefore whichever boy she ultimately chooses to kiss is not a matter of life or death. I also love that she’s completely wrong and doesn’t know it yet.
Did I mention she has pink hair?
I am also incredibly happy and relieved that rather than sidelining Nick (who is my favourite and my best, although I do rather love Mae now too) the book has lots and lots of him in it, fixing up his car and learning how to be a friend to Jamie even though he is a Very Bad Friend and taking his shirt off a lot. Seriously. A lot. I also rather love the tension and agony between the two brothers who love each other very much even though Bad Things Have happened. I do worry that there won’t be nearly enough Nick or Mae in Book 3.
Here are my shipping predictions for Book 3, which is to say I will be UTTERLY MISERABLE if these things do not come to pass. Note I know absolutely nothing about Book 3 or what it will contain except that it will be told from the point of view of Sin. Note also that these pairings do not count as spoilers for the book and that I do have a tendency to ship characters who are desperately unsuitable for each other, up to and including those who have never met.
Having said that:
Alan+Sin= sparks & angry kissing, it must be done
Nick+Mae= FOREVER AND EVER though it will be rather weird if we only see them do stuff when Sin is in the room…
Oh and I totally ship Jamie with someone too but I can’t tell you who cos it will spoil the book but it’s the person who kisses him on page 364.
The best thing is that everyone in the series is currently involved in at least one if not many unrequited pairings, and if there’s one thing I love in fiction it’s unrequited love becoming requited, and thus it has to happen at least ONE time in Book 3. Unless Sarah is super mean.
This may be the most chaotic book review I have written in some time, but oh dear I have been editing all day and my brain is minced and also a bit of a headache. I can’t believe I have to wait another year, again. Sure, in that time I’ll have another two books out of my own, but that’s hardly consolation.
I think I need to read Demon’s Lexicon again. To see how much more I like Mae now. And to compare how many times Nick takes his shirt off.