Bookblog: The Demon's Lexicon

[issenllo]

Ok, so I've been cross-posting in a very inconsistent manner. The posts on my northeastern China trip aren't here at all (but they're here, here and here on LJ). I will do better from now on, I promise! Starting with this bookblog.

sarahtales, whom I first knew of as Maya and writer of Harry Potter fanfics, had her first book accepted for publication and it came out on the very day I started my trip (gah). So much for pre-ordering it. Anyway, back home now and I've finished the book, tho' I must pre-warn that post-trip fatigue may well account for some of my opinions here. Also, seeing that this is a very new book: SPOILERS WITHIN.



Title: The Demon's Lexicon
Author: Sarah Rees Brennan

This is such a huge spoiler that I have put it in spoiler text: Nick, the main character, is totally Gaara.

Okay, not exactly. And kudos to Brennan for keeping this mystery under wraps for about three quarters into the book. Tho' that could just be me, being too dim to pick up the clues earlier in the book.

It's funny to talk about the hallmarks of a writer's style when it's just her first book, but hey, I've read nearly every single one of Maya's fanfics, so. The book does not disappoint in terms of the vivid, brisk writing that Maya is known for, in addition to her smart, funny lines and quirky turns of phrase. Nary a tired cliche in there. I was a quarter through the book when I realised how smoothly she'd worked in the flashbacks, a technique which I had admired in the fanfics, and it was grand to see her do it without a wrinkle in here. I felt the pacing was a little slow to pick up in the first third of the book, tho'. But the rest was okay.

So yeah, no disappointment writing-wise, just lots of satisfaction (and relief that I hadn't picked a dud). And after reading it, my reaction is mainly: So that's how you write these kinds of fantasies.

Lemme digress a minute.

I haven't read that much fantasy--at least, urban fantasy rather than y'know, fantasy fantasy which takes place in imaginary worlds. And in most urban fantasies I've encountered (say, Susan Cooper? Jim Butcher?), the magical stuff usually has traditional underpinnings. Cooper, for example, reworks Arthurian legends, and Butcher draws on all kinds of stories and legends about magic use and scary creatures, such as vampires. As does JKR.

I've got used to the idea that urban fantasies draw on ethnic and religious-based traditions, particularly the western/European sort, to the extent that I could never really see myself writing an urban fantasy story, because those are not my traditions and I felt like a fraud everytime I tried but I couldn't think up a decent urban fantasy scenerio that didn't use them.

(Fantasy fantasy, yes. But I felt like I was orientalising my own culture instead when I tried and anyway I can only sigh in the direction of Barry Hughart.)

(And this may or may not be the time to mention deepad's excellent essay I Didn't Dream of Dragons which elaborates much more eloquently on the general idea.)

Anyway, to end that digression, I've always wondered if it were possible to write an urban fantasy that was not dependent on all the well-known (bowdlerised?) stories about Celtic elves, fairytales, Christianity, Bram Stoker's vampires, or King Arthur, and if so, what such a story would be like.

I'm not saying that The Demon's Lexicon is clean of all such references--but it is mostly free of these obvious underpinnings. It has demons but without the Christian associations of demons being evil tempters, even though the demons are supposed to be evil. It has magicians who kill for power, but that's a dynamic that's near-universal: greedy, amoral individuals killing for power, I mean. It has marks on human skin, but yeah, magical stuff does that. It has magic circles for control, but that's quite... not culture-specific either.

Tho' it does have something called the Goblin Market, which is cool. And the dancing as a way to summon demons. Okay, I can't see how the sword helps when you have guns, but hey, swords are cool.

But anyway, it's an urban fantasy that doesn't instantly call to mind any culture or tradition, and that's neutral in a way that hasn't been seen much. I'm not sure how I like it. I mean, in a way it's a relief to think, hey, I don't have to have street cred in Celtic legends to identify with it, for example, yet on the other hand I feel a bit adrift.

Is that the lack of worldbuilding coming through, or just me being dependent on traditional stuff to feel comfortable? I do feel that more detail would have helped to anchor my impression of the bookverse, though. I mean, for a bunch of young people who are being hunted by magicians, they know remarkably little about how magicians operate. At least, if Nick, the main character knows, he hasn't mentioned that much. And that brings me to another problem I had.

This book focuses on just four characters: Nick, Alan, Mae and Jamie. (Well, there's Nick's mother, but she doesn't get out much, unless you count the part near the end where she confronts the evil magician.) So with just four characters, it's a bit frustrating that I didn't get a very strong impression of them right off the bat. And even halfway through the book I had to keeping reminding myself, "Nick's the one with the sword, Alan's the brother with the limp, Mae's the girl Alan likes and her brother Jamie's the dark horse (not literally)" to keep them in track.

That's a rather clunky and distracting way to read a book, but otherwise I just kept lost. And weirdly, Jamie felt more distinct than the other characters even though he had the smallest role of all, being rather non-actiony and more of a scaredy cat. I felt like I could picture him in my head better. Mae... well, half the time I forgot that she was supposed to have pink hair and that she was brave and that these were supposed to be, well, identifying traits. Mostly, I just thought: gurrl.

Nick's the narrator (and he's on the cover) so you can't escape him yet half the time I couldn't tell if it was him talking or his brother. Alan seemed a rather weak cross between a mysterious middle-aged man and International Man of Mystery.

And just to be totally snippy about the ending: What's so revelatory about black eyes? Even if demons have black eyes? So what? I have black eyes*.

Despite that, the last one-third of the book, when they finally confront the magicians, and there's violence and revelations and scary action, is good and worth the slowness in the first part. So, overall verdict: interesting... I guess.

But really, more detail would be good. This is supposed to be the first book of a trilogy, and it's not very satisfactory that the more concrete parts of worldbuilding will come (if it does) only in second and third books. That's like, a bit too convenient and hints at deus ex machina-ly plotting. I mean, yeah, I know too much detail would be tedious and would possibly destroy the mystery and make the second and third books unsurprising and unspontaneous, which would not be good either, but I want to know more about the characters too and I didn't even realise they lived in Exeter, description was that spare... eh, I don't know what I want.

Enjoyed the book, but wished it were more?

*Okay, they're dark brown if you peer carefully. But I live in Asia. Tons of people here have black eyes.



Right. Hm, this has been a long post, especially for a bookblog. Whew.