reviews
Book review: The Demon's Lexicon, Sarah Rees Brennan. Roughly summarised: urban fantasy, so modern Britain + oh yeah demons and magicians (who are Bad) exist. Socially inept, emotionally stunted, vaguely sociopathic-seeming teenage boy (Nick, our protagonist) lives with Madwoman-in-the-Attic magician mother (Olivia) and So-Selfless-I'm-Actually-Kind-of-a-Martyr older brother (Alan), constantly on the run from the Very Bad Magician with whom some Bad Shit went down in the past involving Olivia. Randomly Gay Youth (Jamie) and his Strong-Willed and Sexy older sister (Mae) turn up at their house on the understanding that Nick and Alan know all about supernatural shit and may be able to help them with a little problem they have. Early complications ensue, followed by Solving Problems through Adventure.
I was wary about this book. sarahtales has long been pretty much my favourite ever Harry Potter fic writer; I actually like her inevitably AU post-HBP epic more than I like Deathly Hallows itself. And she is a wonderful blogger: generous and funny and engaging. So at first, I was extremely excited to hear that she was getting a book published. But she posted a series of cookies for this prior to its release, and I was pretty much without exception underwhelmed.
I wasn't proved completely wrong. Having read it now, the excerpts she posted were among the weakest parts of the book, and I enjoyed the book as a whole very much indeed. She also is a very good writer, and while it kind of depresses me that that's something to be highlighted in a pro author you really should see some of the published bollocks I've picked up recently.
But. I'm still sort of in two minds about the whole thing. In particular, the whole time I was reading I was struck by how incredibly refreshing and new it felt at some points, and how incredibly generic it felt at others. Even in the actual writing, which as I said I like very much - there were multiple points where you can see what a feel she has for telling details, and for unusual and striking descriptions or figures of speech - but then there'd be passages which, while not clumsy, just felt kind of tired or obvious. In terms of the patterning and logics of the narrative, there were places where I found myself pleased and very engaged by how effectively she stepped out of the kind of sweepingness of fantasy adventure narratives, and into the gritty, into the incidental, into actions and reactions that aren't obvious but do ring true. And then she'd just step right back into that almost cliched epicness, usually when she was dealing with exactly the kind of Big Moments that you've seen so many times before they could really do with a different kind of treatment.
Character was probably where this was most noticeable for me, though. In Nick, she has a really wonderful protagonist - awkward and difficult and subtle and sympathetic and interesting. I loved Nick an awful lot. And although Alan slipped into one-note-ness at times early on, and a note that was particularly tiresome at that (martyrdom, when it comes down to it), as the book gains momentum Alan gains more depth and complexity; she starts qualifying his sweetness and selflessness with a real sense of how difficult it must have been for him to be in the position that it turns out he has been, and moreover with some much less straightforwardly sympathetic character traits. But most of the others fell fairly flat for me. I'm not really sure what the point of Jamie was (much as I love, and I do, that she had a fairly major character who was incidentally and non-angstily gay), other than to move the narrative along - although it looks like he may have a much larger part to play in the following books in the series - and Mae didn't really come across to me as a character, tbh. Just a series of actions that sort of made sense when you collect them together, but behind which it was kind of difficult to discern a coherent imagining of a person - more a vague idea of Tropes for Non-Useless Women in Fantasy. Olivia was interesting in the abstract but undeveloped, and the Big Bad they're all running from was pretty caricature-y.
The plot, meanwhile, for a large portion of it, is pretty pedestrian, and yeah, here I will say it's clumsy at points. It actually has a Bad Guy Tells You About His Evil Scheme scene - and it's fourth-walled by Nick, but it's still there.
BUT. And this is a big but. It is also incredibly difficult to talk about without spoilers. The non-spoilery version is that there is a twist at the end which, while not gobsmackingly NO WAI in terms of shock value, is kind of staggering in how it reframes what's gone before it, and makes what she was trying to do with her basic set-up considerably more interesting and actually, very impressive indeed.
I'll try to talk about it below as non-specifically as possible, but fair warning: if you read the book with the following paragraph in mind, you'll probably see the book's major twist coming far before it wants you to. So,
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
What the book's ending stands as, then, and I assume the next two books in the trilogy will extend this, is not a straightforward good vs. evil, humans vs. demons, set-up like most of the rest of the book (given that the kids are essentially battling against magicians to prevent Alan and Jamie from being possessed by demons) - but instead, a story of boundaries meeting and blurring, of the lines between the human world and the demon world being crossed and eroded, and of trying to find some kind of reconciliation. Which I should have seen coming, tbh, as I know from fangirling reading her blog that Humans Learning to Live With Monsters (and vice versa) is one of sarahtales's favourite plots. What really impressed me about this, though, is that the (limited, as this aspect of the plot really does only start up in the last 30 pages or so) way she frames this theme of reconciliation is not easy - it's not governed by themes of harmony or tolerance or sympathy or commonality, or anything like that, but rather by ideas of learned behaviour, of habits, of comforts, of compromises, of impulses and when to listen to them and when to ignore them, of having to force yourself into different patterns of existence. And I was genuinely intrigued by this, enough to now really want to pick up the next book to see if she takes it further.
The other thing the book's ending does, then, is reframe what's gone before it as essentially an exercise in exploring how to write not-entirely-human consciousnesses. Which I always, ALWAYS admire, and now that I know that's what she was trying to do, I can see that she actually did it remarkably deftly and interestingly - especially in how she ties it in with narratives of teenage alienation and identity discovery (which is how it reads before the twist is revealed), so you have this kind of double, mutually-informing set of resonances. Colour me impressed.
/SPOILER
/SPOILER
/SPOILER
/SPOILER
/SPOILER
Even though, then, there were aspects of it I was kind of indifferent to, I do think it's a very impressive debut. And there's enough evidence of quite phenomenal skill and deftness of touch when it's good to make me think that subsequent books in the trilogy might make me revise my opinion of the bits where I think it's less good - giving more time to underdeveloped characters, that kind of thing.
In the end, I managed to both lose myself in it and derive a lot of pleasure and mileage from approaching it more analytically, and I can't really ask for much more than that. Recommended.
Not really sure you can call this a review, but: so thanks (many, MANY thanks :D) to tellezara, I have now seen Phoenix Wright in Takarazuka form.
And. Well.
I can't really review it properly. I don't speak a word of Japanese. I had to piece together what was going on from what I already knew about the plot and galvani helpfully telling me when they were saying "lawyer". I know nothing about Takarazuka, and would embarrass myself horribly if I tried to engage seriously with any aspect of how they do productions.
But damn, it was fun to watch. Maybe because galvani and I "translated" pretty much every conversation in the show as either Nick's Coming Out Conversations or Edgeworth flirting with him. Maybe because we'd both spent the whole afternoon beforehand drinking rum in the sunshine. Maybe because, let's face it, the very idea of Takarazuka is kind of like porn for me only without the sex. I suspect 99% of it was because of the sheer joyousness of watching whoever plays Edgeworth do all the song-and-dance routines with a perfectly IC utterly fucking DEADPAN I-do-not-approve-of-these-shenanigans-but-fuck-how-awesome-am-I-I'm-MILES EDGEWORTH expression on her face the whole time.
Outside of the romance, it felt very much like the games, and for the most part, the characters felt very much like the characters (particular love for Maya and the Butz!) - the main exception was Phoenix; he came across as far too confident and serious - not enough of the lovable loser that he is at that point in the games.
Mostly, though, watching it just reinforced how much I really really want to see a zany comedy musical of these games that just straightforwardly adapts a case or two and adds singing and dancing.
In other news...
On Saturday, I saw two Luigis, a Mario, and a 6ft+ man in a surprisingly impressive Lara Croft cosplay, wandering around the tiny town in which I live. I don't know where they were going or what they were doing, but I'm very sad I didn't go and do it with them.
*
Given that I am aware that I am capable of losing entire days to Harvest Moon doing nothing but doggedly maintaining my massive empire of bizarre hybrid crops, it was probably a bad idea to buy and start Rune Factory at a point when I am trying to get a big chunk of thesis work done.
*
Have reached endgame on Final Fantasy XII. Will I get absolutely battered if I try and do it with main and reserve party all on level 55 and an arsenal of Golden Axes?
I was wary about this book. sarahtales has long been pretty much my favourite ever Harry Potter fic writer; I actually like her inevitably AU post-HBP epic more than I like Deathly Hallows itself. And she is a wonderful blogger: generous and funny and engaging. So at first, I was extremely excited to hear that she was getting a book published. But she posted a series of cookies for this prior to its release, and I was pretty much without exception underwhelmed.
I wasn't proved completely wrong. Having read it now, the excerpts she posted were among the weakest parts of the book, and I enjoyed the book as a whole very much indeed. She also is a very good writer, and while it kind of depresses me that that's something to be highlighted in a pro author you really should see some of the published bollocks I've picked up recently.
But. I'm still sort of in two minds about the whole thing. In particular, the whole time I was reading I was struck by how incredibly refreshing and new it felt at some points, and how incredibly generic it felt at others. Even in the actual writing, which as I said I like very much - there were multiple points where you can see what a feel she has for telling details, and for unusual and striking descriptions or figures of speech - but then there'd be passages which, while not clumsy, just felt kind of tired or obvious. In terms of the patterning and logics of the narrative, there were places where I found myself pleased and very engaged by how effectively she stepped out of the kind of sweepingness of fantasy adventure narratives, and into the gritty, into the incidental, into actions and reactions that aren't obvious but do ring true. And then she'd just step right back into that almost cliched epicness, usually when she was dealing with exactly the kind of Big Moments that you've seen so many times before they could really do with a different kind of treatment.
Character was probably where this was most noticeable for me, though. In Nick, she has a really wonderful protagonist - awkward and difficult and subtle and sympathetic and interesting. I loved Nick an awful lot. And although Alan slipped into one-note-ness at times early on, and a note that was particularly tiresome at that (martyrdom, when it comes down to it), as the book gains momentum Alan gains more depth and complexity; she starts qualifying his sweetness and selflessness with a real sense of how difficult it must have been for him to be in the position that it turns out he has been, and moreover with some much less straightforwardly sympathetic character traits. But most of the others fell fairly flat for me. I'm not really sure what the point of Jamie was (much as I love, and I do, that she had a fairly major character who was incidentally and non-angstily gay), other than to move the narrative along - although it looks like he may have a much larger part to play in the following books in the series - and Mae didn't really come across to me as a character, tbh. Just a series of actions that sort of made sense when you collect them together, but behind which it was kind of difficult to discern a coherent imagining of a person - more a vague idea of Tropes for Non-Useless Women in Fantasy. Olivia was interesting in the abstract but undeveloped, and the Big Bad they're all running from was pretty caricature-y.
The plot, meanwhile, for a large portion of it, is pretty pedestrian, and yeah, here I will say it's clumsy at points. It actually has a Bad Guy Tells You About His Evil Scheme scene - and it's fourth-walled by Nick, but it's still there.
BUT. And this is a big but. It is also incredibly difficult to talk about without spoilers. The non-spoilery version is that there is a twist at the end which, while not gobsmackingly NO WAI in terms of shock value, is kind of staggering in how it reframes what's gone before it, and makes what she was trying to do with her basic set-up considerably more interesting and actually, very impressive indeed.
I'll try to talk about it below as non-specifically as possible, but fair warning: if you read the book with the following paragraph in mind, you'll probably see the book's major twist coming far before it wants you to. So,
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
What the book's ending stands as, then, and I assume the next two books in the trilogy will extend this, is not a straightforward good vs. evil, humans vs. demons, set-up like most of the rest of the book (given that the kids are essentially battling against magicians to prevent Alan and Jamie from being possessed by demons) - but instead, a story of boundaries meeting and blurring, of the lines between the human world and the demon world being crossed and eroded, and of trying to find some kind of reconciliation. Which I should have seen coming, tbh, as I know from fangirling reading her blog that Humans Learning to Live With Monsters (and vice versa) is one of sarahtales's favourite plots. What really impressed me about this, though, is that the (limited, as this aspect of the plot really does only start up in the last 30 pages or so) way she frames this theme of reconciliation is not easy - it's not governed by themes of harmony or tolerance or sympathy or commonality, or anything like that, but rather by ideas of learned behaviour, of habits, of comforts, of compromises, of impulses and when to listen to them and when to ignore them, of having to force yourself into different patterns of existence. And I was genuinely intrigued by this, enough to now really want to pick up the next book to see if she takes it further.
The other thing the book's ending does, then, is reframe what's gone before it as essentially an exercise in exploring how to write not-entirely-human consciousnesses. Which I always, ALWAYS admire, and now that I know that's what she was trying to do, I can see that she actually did it remarkably deftly and interestingly - especially in how she ties it in with narratives of teenage alienation and identity discovery (which is how it reads before the twist is revealed), so you have this kind of double, mutually-informing set of resonances. Colour me impressed.
/SPOILER
/SPOILER
/SPOILER
/SPOILER
/SPOILER
Even though, then, there were aspects of it I was kind of indifferent to, I do think it's a very impressive debut. And there's enough evidence of quite phenomenal skill and deftness of touch when it's good to make me think that subsequent books in the trilogy might make me revise my opinion of the bits where I think it's less good - giving more time to underdeveloped characters, that kind of thing.
In the end, I managed to both lose myself in it and derive a lot of pleasure and mileage from approaching it more analytically, and I can't really ask for much more than that. Recommended.
Not really sure you can call this a review, but: so thanks (many, MANY thanks :D) to tellezara, I have now seen Phoenix Wright in Takarazuka form.
And. Well.
I can't really review it properly. I don't speak a word of Japanese. I had to piece together what was going on from what I already knew about the plot and galvani helpfully telling me when they were saying "lawyer". I know nothing about Takarazuka, and would embarrass myself horribly if I tried to engage seriously with any aspect of how they do productions.
But damn, it was fun to watch. Maybe because galvani and I "translated" pretty much every conversation in the show as either Nick's Coming Out Conversations or Edgeworth flirting with him. Maybe because we'd both spent the whole afternoon beforehand drinking rum in the sunshine. Maybe because, let's face it, the very idea of Takarazuka is kind of like porn for me only without the sex. I suspect 99% of it was because of the sheer joyousness of watching whoever plays Edgeworth do all the song-and-dance routines with a perfectly IC utterly fucking DEADPAN I-do-not-approve-of-these-shenanigans-but-fuck-how-awesome-am-I-I'm-MILES EDGEWORTH expression on her face the whole time.
Outside of the romance, it felt very much like the games, and for the most part, the characters felt very much like the characters (particular love for Maya and the Butz!) - the main exception was Phoenix; he came across as far too confident and serious - not enough of the lovable loser that he is at that point in the games.
Mostly, though, watching it just reinforced how much I really really want to see a zany comedy musical of these games that just straightforwardly adapts a case or two and adds singing and dancing.
In other news...
On Saturday, I saw two Luigis, a Mario, and a 6ft+ man in a surprisingly impressive Lara Croft cosplay, wandering around the tiny town in which I live. I don't know where they were going or what they were doing, but I'm very sad I didn't go and do it with them.
*
Given that I am aware that I am capable of losing entire days to Harvest Moon doing nothing but doggedly maintaining my massive empire of bizarre hybrid crops, it was probably a bad idea to buy and start Rune Factory at a point when I am trying to get a big chunk of thesis work done.
*
Have reached endgame on Final Fantasy XII. Will I get absolutely battered if I try and do it with main and reserve party all on level 55 and an arsenal of Golden Axes?