So, inaugural post. How exiting. But before we begin, a confession: I have never liked nice people.
As characters, I mean; obviously, I'm a fan of them in my day to day life. But in novels? No, I like the difficult people, the closed-off, cold-blooded, and possibly a bit evil people. The ones for whom being "good" is neither simple, instinctual, nor obvious, but for whom it takes real work, and sometimes real sacrifice.
It baffles me that, when half of everyone I knew (some nine years ago) was trying to persuade me to give Harry Potter a chance, not one of them mentioned Snape.
This brings us to The Demon's Lexicon, by Sarah Rees Brennan, who set out to write a novel from the point of view of That Guy, you know the one. The romantic hero of a thousand different urban fantasy novels; the closed off, untouchable asshole that all the women always fell for, who was always in control of himself and never showed any weakness or emotion. That Guy. In this, she succeeds admirably.
(British cover, because I think it's pretty. Yes, I did order this book from the UK just so I could have the cover I liked better. Then I bought the ebook from amazon while I was waiting for it to arrive, because I have no impulse control.)
Nick Ryves is not a very nice person. He's an attractive person, even a charismatic person, and he has a dry sarcastic sense of humor that I love, but his emotional spectrum seems to run from "irritated" to "enraged" and he cannot fathom why he should think any given person's life is worth respecting, let alone their emotions. He makes one exception, vis, his older brother Alan.
Alan is much better at human interaction. He's pleasant, charming, polite, considerate, very, very kind, and a much less nice person than Nick. Much less. When our story begins, Nick loves and values exactly one person in all the world, and is more than indifferent to the fate of all others. That he should then treat everyone else with a certain ruthlessness is only to be expected. Alan is different; Alan does like people. He feels an emotional connection to them. And he every bit as willing, if not more, to use them very badly. Mind you, it bothers him to do so. He is, as I mentioned, very kind. He just doesn't let it stop him for even a moment. (I adore Alan; does it show?)
This is urban fantasy, so it's set in a world Much Like Ours, but with some supernatural difference. In this particular case, that difference would be that it is infested with magicians who spend their time summoning demons to gain greater power. (Demons find their own world desperately boring, and are therefore entirely amenable to trading power for the chance to spend a few days wandering about our world in a human body. Unfortuatly, that kills the human in question.) Since you more or less have to kill people for the demons in order to get them to give you the aforementioned power, it thereby follows that none of the really powerful people in this world are good people.
Our heroes' mother used to be one of the magicians, and when she left them she took with her something they would dearly like back. They've been hunting the family ever since, and they caught up with our heroes' father years ago. So for some time it's been just the two brothers and their less-than-totally-stable mother against most of the scarier people in the world. As a consequence of which, they've spent a lot of time running and more time fighting. This is how Nick grew up to be the sort of boy who keeps a sword under the kitchen sink.
And then two kids by the names of Mae and Jaime, classmates of Nick's, as it happens, show up on their doorstep looking for advice. Jamie has been marked as a sacrifice to a demon, and someone told his sister than the brothers might be able to help. While Alan is trying to persuade his brother that yes, they do have to do something, and no, they can't just abandon them, the house is attacked by their magical stalkers and said stalkers' pet demons. When the dust settles, Nick is seriously displeased to discover that his brother has managed to put himself in the same condition as Jamie. (Alan takes the situation with a certain degree of equanimity; he likes Mae and Jamie, (particularly Mae) and it's much easier to persuade his brother to help them if Alan's life is on the line as well.) The rest of the novel falls out from there.
The Demon's Lexicon is brilliantly plotted, with a twist and an ending so perfect even I, I, will say nothing about so as not to spoil them, but the plot is not what I love about this book. (Though it is, as mentioned, brilliant.) It has an absolutely fabulous setting, with a twist on its mythology and demonology (Sumerian!) that I have never seen before in any fantasy novel, and a very elegant, well-conceived mythos that just gets more interesting as the layers are pealed back from it, but this is also not what I love about this book.
No, what I love here are the characters. I love Mae, who is so determined to be strong, and so out of her depth, and who doesn't let that stop her even a little bit, and I love Jamie, who may be (justly) terrified, but who is also frickin' hysterical.
I adore Nick, who is a little bit of a sociopath, and who doesn't even know if he's capable of love (he is), or if even someone like Alan could honestly see him as someone worth loving (he does), and who will risk his life to protect people he couldn't care less about (initially) because it's what his brother would want, and he would do anything, absolutely anything, for Alan. There is --for me-- something terribly compelling about a person trying to do good with absolutely no internal moral compass to make things simple.
And I especially love Alan, who tries so hard to be good because he can't afford to be nice, and he really wishes he could. Who wears glasses, and limps, and is affable and sweet-tempered, and also the most devious, scheming, ruthless bastard in the world.
In conclusion, you should really read this book.
