(no subject)
Today I: got up, went for a walk, read some Raymond Carver, went for a walk, started The Demon's Covenant, couldn't put it down, was eventually pulled away to weed the garden, went for a walk, read through dinner, went for a walk, finished the book, played scrabble with my family. Life is good.
Bookish thoughts: I read The Demon's Lexicon over a year ago I enjoyed it, but it didn't really blow me away. I loved Alan and Nick's relationship and enjoyed the banter, but I wasn't enthralled by the world and I thought the plot was somewhat predictable. Other than the two brotherly protagonists, not much stuck in my head. The Demon's Covenant, however, I loved. The world-building didn't substantially change, and this book was pretty light on the plot side of things, but this time around I really fell in love with the characters. I think the switch in narrator really helped: I found Mae a lot more accessible to read than Nick, partly because Nick was so wrapped up in his own story that you only really got close to him and Alan, whereas with Mae, we got her relationship with Jamie, her relationship with the brothers, Nick and Alan's relationship, her relationship with her mother, Seb, Sin... the world just felt a lot bigger and more accessible. I also felt like the writing overall was stronger: some of the dialogue in the last book felt like banter for the sake of banter, and the dialogue of this book, while equally amusing, felt more organic.
But mostly I loved the characters and their complicated relationships. I don't even know where to start here. Nick, emotionless and inhuman, except desperately needing Alan, badly enough that he's willing to take lessons in being human. The slow way that he starts to care about other people, and parallels his father's journey - as his father learned to care for Nick, Nick begins to care about Jamie and Mae. And then there's Alan! Alan was my favorite character from the last book, and I liked getting to see him from a different point of view. I love how he's not good, how he's a manipulative liar who will do anything to save his brother, but he tries so hard. How Mae describes him at the end, "trying so hard to be good because he couldn't believe he was." I love that he knows he'll choose his brother, every time, but he cares about doing the right thing, and won't let himself forget the consequences of his choices. How he wants desperately to help Nick, to hold onto him.
And Jamie! Ridiculous, adorable Jamie! (Who I keep typing as Jaime, aughh, ASOIAF.) I don't have much to say about him, but I enjoyed how he unfolded over the story. Mostly I like his relationship with Mae, and I love how wry and funny and determined Mae is. I love that she's the only main character who doesn't have any sort of special powers, and that she jumps in head first anyway and does her best to figure everyone out, and that she wants to save everyone (well, except for Gerald). And Annabel! It's so rare for the parents to get to do stuff in this kind of book, but she started out as the distant mother and then got to join in the plot and be awesome and fence with Nick and take out Gerald with a golf club and save the world a little. Although I do wish she'd gotten to be awesome for more of the book.
My one other complaint was that Mae, despite being a wonderful narrator, didn't have that much to do. She did a great job of interacting with everyone and smoothing over all the situations and wrangling all the intractable characters into the places they needed to be, but in the end, her grand plan didn't turn out to be very interesting, and it all came down to the fact that Alan had it under control to begin with. I wish her grand plan could have been a little twistier. Oh, and I don't understand why she got Nick to mark her. I mean, I understand the reasons she gave, it just didn't seem like a good decision, and it didn't seem to advance the plot at all - it was the only part of the book where I got annoyed because I couldn't understand why a character was acting the way they were acting. For the most part, one of the strengths of the book is that I really understood the characters' varied motivations, so it jarred a bit when it felt like she was makig a randomly bad decision. And then it never went anywhere.
Overall, though, I really enjoyed the book and will be going out and looking for a copy of the sequel tomorrow.
Bookish thoughts: I read The Demon's Lexicon over a year ago I enjoyed it, but it didn't really blow me away. I loved Alan and Nick's relationship and enjoyed the banter, but I wasn't enthralled by the world and I thought the plot was somewhat predictable. Other than the two brotherly protagonists, not much stuck in my head. The Demon's Covenant, however, I loved. The world-building didn't substantially change, and this book was pretty light on the plot side of things, but this time around I really fell in love with the characters. I think the switch in narrator really helped: I found Mae a lot more accessible to read than Nick, partly because Nick was so wrapped up in his own story that you only really got close to him and Alan, whereas with Mae, we got her relationship with Jamie, her relationship with the brothers, Nick and Alan's relationship, her relationship with her mother, Seb, Sin... the world just felt a lot bigger and more accessible. I also felt like the writing overall was stronger: some of the dialogue in the last book felt like banter for the sake of banter, and the dialogue of this book, while equally amusing, felt more organic.
But mostly I loved the characters and their complicated relationships. I don't even know where to start here. Nick, emotionless and inhuman, except desperately needing Alan, badly enough that he's willing to take lessons in being human. The slow way that he starts to care about other people, and parallels his father's journey - as his father learned to care for Nick, Nick begins to care about Jamie and Mae. And then there's Alan! Alan was my favorite character from the last book, and I liked getting to see him from a different point of view. I love how he's not good, how he's a manipulative liar who will do anything to save his brother, but he tries so hard. How Mae describes him at the end, "trying so hard to be good because he couldn't believe he was." I love that he knows he'll choose his brother, every time, but he cares about doing the right thing, and won't let himself forget the consequences of his choices. How he wants desperately to help Nick, to hold onto him.
And Jamie! Ridiculous, adorable Jamie! (Who I keep typing as Jaime, aughh, ASOIAF.) I don't have much to say about him, but I enjoyed how he unfolded over the story. Mostly I like his relationship with Mae, and I love how wry and funny and determined Mae is. I love that she's the only main character who doesn't have any sort of special powers, and that she jumps in head first anyway and does her best to figure everyone out, and that she wants to save everyone (well, except for Gerald). And Annabel! It's so rare for the parents to get to do stuff in this kind of book, but she started out as the distant mother and then got to join in the plot and be awesome and fence with Nick and take out Gerald with a golf club and save the world a little. Although I do wish she'd gotten to be awesome for more of the book.
My one other complaint was that Mae, despite being a wonderful narrator, didn't have that much to do. She did a great job of interacting with everyone and smoothing over all the situations and wrangling all the intractable characters into the places they needed to be, but in the end, her grand plan didn't turn out to be very interesting, and it all came down to the fact that Alan had it under control to begin with. I wish her grand plan could have been a little twistier. Oh, and I don't understand why she got Nick to mark her. I mean, I understand the reasons she gave, it just didn't seem like a good decision, and it didn't seem to advance the plot at all - it was the only part of the book where I got annoyed because I couldn't understand why a character was acting the way they were acting. For the most part, one of the strengths of the book is that I really understood the characters' varied motivations, so it jarred a bit when it felt like she was makig a randomly bad decision. And then it never went anywhere.
Overall, though, I really enjoyed the book and will be going out and looking for a copy of the sequel tomorrow.