"The Demon's Covenant" by Sarah Rees Brennan [book 2]
First read: 04.06.2010
Gosh. Was this hard to get my hands on! I had like, adventures, trying to find it in London. That said, it was totally worth the trouble. I liked this better than the first book, "The Demon's Lexicon", but I realised that reading this as opposed to listening to it makes a huge difference on my appreciation of the style, which is SRB's strongest suit.
Imperfect, for example I can't say I'm that in love with Mae (not that I dislike her, I just don't like her either, I think it's mostly that she's seventeen and wants to be surer of who she is than she actually is or can be with the experience of herself she never manages to be quite as kickass as she wants) but I was hooked from page one, well, maybe not page one because I had already read the first chapter but once I got to the new parts -> hooked.
Scoradh is right about almost everything she complained about (I have no idea what she's talking about regarding Mae's clothes, but that can be said for most clothing) but I still had an awesome time reading it.
Jamie is still my favourite character, for all that he is an idiot who thinks too well of people and confuses niceness with goodness. *spoilers now* I liked Alan's struggle to choose between his brother and the world, he loves his brother despite his faults but the very faults that hurt him so much (Nick's a demon, there's only so much he can do to reciprocrate the affection Alan feels for him in ways Alan can understand) I liked how both he and Mae spend the whole book missing the fact that NICK LOVES ALAN MORE THAN ANYTHING and demostrates it with every action, he even shows he cares about Jamie and Mae and Mae seems perfectly capable of interpreting his protection as caring, why this doesn't count for Alan I can't imagine. Nick is equally bad at understanding them, which begs the question, how are demons so good at understanding what humans want and providing it magically to the point they can extract their deepest desires and use them against them and THEN they can't keep a human happy when they want to for non-evil reasons? I was assuming Nick was not trying to trick Alan but instead trying to be himself, part of which includes loving Alan but not in the ways Alan loves him but then he ask Mae to explain to him how to emulate human emotions, furthermore, Nick seems to be acquiring a real understanding and applying it quite easily. If demons are the supernatural equivalent to people without feelings (psychopaths) then I'm not sure they should be able to do this but let's say somebody fixed Nick's magical amigdala, the balance within Nick's alieness and his theoretical understanding of human desires (Seb) seems a bit uneven sometimes because Nick, unlike psychopaths, doesn't seem to have a theoretical understanding of anything since for him language and thus abstraction, are unnatural and learned behaviour.
I didn't think Seb kissing Jamie made sense in those circunstances. Seb seems to be there to have an effect on other characters (made Nick suspicious, Alan jealous, Mae dream of normalcy, Jamie furious) instead of having his own motives. And sure, he is a puppet but... why does he go see them and then change his mind? Why does he kiss Jamie for the first time in the middle of a panic attack? If they were together it could make sense as a gesture of comfort, but a first kiss when talking about how you killed someone? Don't get it. *
I need to stop now because I actually loved the book. Have some Quotes! There are some more at bookreads.
♥ "It's true," said Alan... "I was cheating. They were going after my brother. When losing isn't an option, it doesn't matter what you have to do to win." pp.106
♥ "Nick"... "In two worlds," said Alan quietly. "there is nothing I love half as much as you."
Gerald's voiced echoed in Mae's ears as if he was still there. If you told him how you felt, he wouldn't even know what you mean.
Every line of Nick's body was tense with the desire to leave, and for a second Mae was he would, that he would just turn without a word and go.
"Sometimes," Nick said, still looking at the floor, his voice rough and shocking in the silence. "Sometimes I want to be human for you."
"But not usually," said Alan. It wasn't even a question.
"No," Nick said. "Usually not."
He turned away, closing the door behind him. pp. 129
It's shocking to me how Alan is the one we should feel sorry about when Nick is constantly being asked to be something he is not and when he declares he loves his brother enough that he would change his very essence, destroy himself, to make him happy, Alan is a total bitch and says that wanting to sometimes is not enough. Well, it sure as hell beats getting loved by someone who wants to change you. Why does Alan get the moral high ground of loving Nick despite his demoness but Nick is just naturally inclined to love Alan because of his humanity, not despite it? Humanity is not a quality Nick should find worthy. For all his purported inability to feel Nick spends the whole of book 1 and 2 mortally afraid of losing his brother and conscious that this is somehow his fault because he's not able to make Alan happy (which is partly why Alan keeps getting himself into risky situations).
♥ It didn't take much to make Alan happy; he was used to living on crumbs.
It made her feel terribly sorry for him, but she couldn't really understand it. She was pretty comfortable with wanting a lot from life. pp. 131.
Of course, then you get that the guy is profoundly unhappy because the person he got to love, the only one that stayed (I'm not counting Olivia since she clearly didn't want to interact with him) is physically incapable of returning his feelings and so his own love and the fact that he gets to live with Nick and make him happy has to be enough to get by. Because even trying to connect with other people gets Nick to act crazy.
♥ "I-" said Nick, his voice halting. "I don't mind it as much when - when people touch me. Some people."
"Because you trust them not to hurt you?" Mae asked tentatively.
"No," Nick said, his voice harsh. "Because I'd let them hurt me."
♥ "I don't trust men everybody likes," Annabel said in a dark voice. "Being nice isn't the same as being good."
"Yeah," Jamie said, arms crossed over his chest and eyes dark. Mae reached out and touched his sore wrist carefully and he smiled. "I'm starting to get that now. But you're wrong about Alan. Some people think that being nice is a substitute for being good, or - or they're so messed up they think being nice is the same. Alan knows the difference. He just tries really hard to be nice, because he's afraid he's not good at all." pp. 400
♥ Mae had been interested when she'd thought he was a gorgeous guy whose strangeness she'd put down to the effects of living on the run from magicians. She wasn't still interested now that she knew he was a demon, put into the body of a baby by the Obsidian Circle magicians and raised human, but a demon all the same; something otherworldly that preyed on her kind. It would be impossible.
She tore her gaze away from Nick, dark and silent at the window, to the friendly face of the guy who'd raised a demon and set him loose on the world.
♥ "You did lie to Merris!"
"I lie to everyone," Alan said softly. "It's nothing personal." pp. 318
♥ "Lots of people would like to have someone tall, dark, and handsome around to love them sullenly and passionately," Mae said, "I read it in a book."
Jamie looked ill.
"Not me. I would like someone to express their feelings by being very, very nice to me all the time. And making me laugh. And then I would make them laugh too. And - and nobody would kill anybody." pp. 367
♥ Low and cold, Nick said, "Betray me."
Alan's head snapped up. "What?"
"Betray me," Nick said again, still in that terrible toneless demon's voice, hands clenching on the kitchen counter so hard Mae thought it would break. "Turn me over to the magicians, take the magic, do whatever you think you need to do, I do not care. But don't leave."
She'd had it all wrong, Mae thought, feeling numb all over. She'd known Nick was afraid of something, learning fear the way she'd described it: feeling paralized even though you know you have to act, because you're sure that if you even move, the most terrible thing you can think of will happen.
She just hadn't understood.
From the look on Alan's face, he hadn't understood either.
"Oh, Nick," He said in a soft, amazed voice. "No."
He limped the few steps towards his brother, then reached out. A shiver ran all the way through Nick, as if he was a spooked animal about to bolt, but he didn't bolt. Alan's hand settled on the back of his brother's neck, and Nick bowed his head a little more and let him do it.
"No, no, no," Alan said in his beautiful voice, turning it into a lullaby, soothing and sweet. "Nick. I would never leave." pp. 383
♥ "Alan said to me once that as I couldn't tell lies, I shouldn't tell secrets," Nick said. "I thought you'd figure it out." pp. 344
♥ "I-" said Nick, his voice halting. "I don't mind it as much when - when people touch me. Some people."
Mae looked down, and Nick, who looked more relaxed when he'd been stabbed, slowly lifted his hand from his chest and laid it on the tumbled sheets between them, fingers half-curled into his palm. He was still regarding the ceiling with a fixed glare.
"Because you trust them not to hurt you?" Mae asked tentatively.
"No," Nick said, his voice harsh. "Because I'd let them hurt me."
♥ "Well, speaking as a feminist, I'm glad that women can lead--uh, groups of unspeakable magical evil."
"Yes," Alan said gravely. "It'd be shoking if the evil magicians were sexist. For one thing, that would mean they were stupid, and having stupid enemies would be a terrible blow to my manly pride."
♥ "I'm told I have the body of a god."
"A Greek god, or one of those gods with the horse heads or elephant's legs coming out of their chests?" Alan asked. "Next time someone tells you that, ask them to specify."
*author: female, @read in english, author: sarah rees brennan, #fantasy, *fandomer-written, -young adult, 2010, 2010: novel in english, book-2010, #novel, #urban-fantasy, +family, [quotes], [quotes] book