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So, Sarah Rees Brennan continues to be one of my favorite new people, and I went back and read her Demon's Lexicon trilogy, and it was pretty awesome! I'm not sure I liked it quite as much as Unspoken but I definitely ate through all three books in a very short amount of time and feel like my life is greatly enriched by it, at the very least because I am trying to hoard witty quips so that I can be funnier, and SRB both talks and writes largely in witty quips. Remarkably, all of her characters still manage to have their own distinct voices, so Nick's sarcastic smart-mouth is totally different from Jamie's babbling "helpless act," both of which are different from everyone else's ways of speaking even though pretty much everyone is funny.
This series contains many of what I am beginning to suspect are SRB's particular obsessions, these being: close relations where you don't know which one is evil; kids taking care of other kids; all the makeouts; magic with babies; deep dark family secrets; and possibly some other things I can't remember off the top of my head.
At any rate, there are three books, and they are all from different characters' points of view, which is pretty cool. Book 1, The Demon's Lexicon, is told by Nick Ryves, which is quite interesting, because Nick has some issues with language, namely that it is composed of words, and particularly all sorts of words that refer to things he doesn't quite understand, like feelings. Nick, as far as we can tell, is dyslexic to the point of functional illiteracy and also possibly schizoid. Eventually we find out why but I will not tell you, except for the possibly-obvious hint that it made the title of the series make sense. Nick enjoys killing things, edit:wearing leather jackets knives and other pointy objects(1), and being sarcastic. He lives with his batshit crazy mother, who hates him, and his older brother Alan, who is sweet and nerdy and also a world-class liar. They never live in one place for too long because magicians keep showing up and trying to kill them.
Magicians, in this universe, are pretty much evil; while someone may be able to do small amounts of magic on their own, magicians tend to end up wanting more and more magic power and get it by feeding people to demons. Demons live in another dimension which is apparently so cold and miserable they will do pretty much anything to get out of it and have some other experiences. Demons occasionally leave marks on people so they can possess them; this tends to zombify the person pretty quickly. Nick and Alan are living temporarily in Exeter or somewhere when a kid from their school called Jamie shows up with a demon's mark on his leg--a third-stage one, which is the most severe and lets you get possessed (the demons kind of have to mark people in stages). Alan decides to help them because he is all nice like that and also because he has a crush on Jamie's sister Mae, who is awesome and has pink hair. Alan's help involves Alan getting temporarily demon-marked so Jamie's can go down to a less severe stage (or something) and Nick is all like URGH ALAN WHY DO YOU INSIST ON HELPING PEOPLE THIS IS A PAIN IN THE ASS.
So book one is mostly Nick being totally cranky about how do we get these damn demon's marks off of Alan and Jamie, plus a plot with an evil circle of magicians that are all relevant to the family backstory and we find out lots of deep dark family secrets, which are deep and dark like whoa. Book Two is from the POV of awesome tiny pink-haired Mae, and largely recounts The Gang's attempt to defeat the next incarnation of the evil circle of magicians, plus dealing with the fallout from various secrets being discovered about Nick's and Jamie's identities. Book Three is from the POV of Sin, a dancer at the Goblin Market who is a fairly minor character in the first two books, and this book is partly about the third evil circle of magicians (the one that absorbed the last evil circle of magicians) but also largely about who will lead the Goblin Market in the future, and I'm not going to bother telling you anything about the Goblin Market right now because honestly, it is the Goblin Market, you KNOW it has to be awesome.
There are also Demon's Lexicon short stories on SRB's website, my favorite of which, so far, is Nick and Jamie Go to the Movies, which is just as adorbs as it sounds.
1 - Look, in my head, it's easy to get these two things mixed up. Nick pretty much is always armed, and I feel like if you're going to be always armed you need a leather jacket to hide all your weapons under, but as SRB kindly pointed out on Twitter, Nick actually managed to lose his shirt like all the time. These are the perils of being a procrastinatory lazybutt and not reviewing books until like a month after you've read them. At any rate, I'm pretty sure I'm right about the knives, because Nick often throws them at Jamie who then wibbles about it very memorably.
This series contains many of what I am beginning to suspect are SRB's particular obsessions, these being: close relations where you don't know which one is evil; kids taking care of other kids; all the makeouts; magic with babies; deep dark family secrets; and possibly some other things I can't remember off the top of my head.
At any rate, there are three books, and they are all from different characters' points of view, which is pretty cool. Book 1, The Demon's Lexicon, is told by Nick Ryves, which is quite interesting, because Nick has some issues with language, namely that it is composed of words, and particularly all sorts of words that refer to things he doesn't quite understand, like feelings. Nick, as far as we can tell, is dyslexic to the point of functional illiteracy and also possibly schizoid. Eventually we find out why but I will not tell you, except for the possibly-obvious hint that it made the title of the series make sense. Nick enjoys killing things, edit:
Magicians, in this universe, are pretty much evil; while someone may be able to do small amounts of magic on their own, magicians tend to end up wanting more and more magic power and get it by feeding people to demons. Demons live in another dimension which is apparently so cold and miserable they will do pretty much anything to get out of it and have some other experiences. Demons occasionally leave marks on people so they can possess them; this tends to zombify the person pretty quickly. Nick and Alan are living temporarily in Exeter or somewhere when a kid from their school called Jamie shows up with a demon's mark on his leg--a third-stage one, which is the most severe and lets you get possessed (the demons kind of have to mark people in stages). Alan decides to help them because he is all nice like that and also because he has a crush on Jamie's sister Mae, who is awesome and has pink hair. Alan's help involves Alan getting temporarily demon-marked so Jamie's can go down to a less severe stage (or something) and Nick is all like URGH ALAN WHY DO YOU INSIST ON HELPING PEOPLE THIS IS A PAIN IN THE ASS.
So book one is mostly Nick being totally cranky about how do we get these damn demon's marks off of Alan and Jamie, plus a plot with an evil circle of magicians that are all relevant to the family backstory and we find out lots of deep dark family secrets, which are deep and dark like whoa. Book Two is from the POV of awesome tiny pink-haired Mae, and largely recounts The Gang's attempt to defeat the next incarnation of the evil circle of magicians, plus dealing with the fallout from various secrets being discovered about Nick's and Jamie's identities. Book Three is from the POV of Sin, a dancer at the Goblin Market who is a fairly minor character in the first two books, and this book is partly about the third evil circle of magicians (the one that absorbed the last evil circle of magicians) but also largely about who will lead the Goblin Market in the future, and I'm not going to bother telling you anything about the Goblin Market right now because honestly, it is the Goblin Market, you KNOW it has to be awesome.
There are also Demon's Lexicon short stories on SRB's website, my favorite of which, so far, is Nick and Jamie Go to the Movies, which is just as adorbs as it sounds.
1 - Look, in my head, it's easy to get these two things mixed up. Nick pretty much is always armed, and I feel like if you're going to be always armed you need a leather jacket to hide all your weapons under, but as SRB kindly pointed out on Twitter, Nick actually managed to lose his shirt like all the time. These are the perils of being a procrastinatory lazybutt and not reviewing books until like a month after you've read them. At any rate, I'm pretty sure I'm right about the knives, because Nick often throws them at Jamie who then wibbles about it very memorably.
