Sarah [Margaret K. McElderry Books - The Demons Lexicon by Rees Brennan

Having heard rave reviews about this book, I went out and got it. To be blunt, it was underwhelming. It was a fast read and I got through the whole thing in one evening, and while there were some clever plot twists and surprises, the prose was plodding and the style mediocre. There was something a little bit off about the book in general. It felt very flat, so much so that I wanted to put it down after the first chapter, but only continued because I'd heard the surprise ending was incredible. Brennan does a good job of writing witty banter, but her exposition was clunky. I never got a good sense of setting, and her character descriptions were often trite. You know what I mean. The raised eyebrows, gritted teeth, voice of ice, etc. Overall, the prose and style felt amateurish.

To Brennan's credit, the plot was decent and the ending was very good, as advertised. However, I didn't think it was worth trudging through an entire book of flat prose for. I'm giving it a 3 instead of a 2 because I think much of my disappointment is due to the hype this book got. It's certainly not terrible; just nothing above average either.

This was a well written YA fantasy novel, that should be appreciated by male and female readers alike of all age groups. After I read it, I passed it on to my 13 year old son, who enjoyed it as well. We are anxiously awaiting the sequel.

I really enjoyed The Demon's Lexicon. It moves a little too slowly at the beginning, and leaves you wondering when it's going to pick up, but the second half more than makes up for it. The characters are realistic and engaging, and carefully avoided falling into any of the clichés that are common in urban fantasy. Sarah Rees Brennan built a world that is imaginative, well described, and completely believable. Brennan is a very promising new author, and I can't wait for her next book. All in all, this book was very well done.

This is an excellent read! The author did an incredible job at constructing a well-thought out plot, with main characters who jump off the page, each in their own way. The story takes twists all along the way, revealing a whole new world, with complications unthinkable. Highly recommended for anyone who likes well-plotted stories and well-developed, in-depth characters. It will leave you full of thoughts, doubts, and questions for days after reading. Though it's a YA genre, it's a great read for adults, too. I can't wait for the next installment!

I thought The Demon's Lexicon was excellent in every way. It was witty and shrewd at times, and the twists and turns just kept me coming back for more. Nick and his brother have been on the run from magicians for all their lives. In this case, magicians = the big, bad and ugly, and they're after a charm that Nick's mother stole- and keeps her alive.

If it was up to Nick, he'd let the magicians get their charm back. Nick and his mother have never been close, in fact that's an understatement. They hate each other, and while it was weird for me, it is a totally normal relationship for them.

I loved Nick even before reading the story; he had an air of mystery and protectiveness that was very appealing. Looking at the world through Nick's eyes showed me the little things that we humans take for granted; unnecessary things that we do, but we take in stride every day: lying, for example. Nick seemed a little cold and uncaring at times, but it is offset by how much he loves his brother. Whatever he does, he does it for Alan, and this is what proves to me that he still has humanity in him.

It is for this very reason that Nick puts up with two strangers, Mae and Jamie, that come for help in the middle of night -and endangers Alan's life. While Nick is all for throwing them to the wolves (for good reason!), Alan chooses to help them, putting others before himself.

I prefer Mae to be with Alan because I like the idea of Nick being a free agent, unattached to any one particular girl and yet being happy about it. It opens up a wide spectrum of possibilities that I'd love to explore as a reader. One thing I'd definitely love to see is more types of beings in the Demon's Lexicon universe. And for once I want the girl not to get the guy, yknow?

Also, Mae seems very suitable for Alan. He's gentle whereas she's... rougher in a way. But well, suitability's not necessarily what gets our blood pumping, is it?

I'm a little disappointed to close the book on such a fantastic story. Good news though! It's going be a trilogy, and the next book (The Demon's Covenant) is going to be told from Mae's eyes. While I'm not really a fan of Mae and I'll miss reading from Nick's point of view, it'd be great to see how Sarah Rees Brennan develops the storyline and evolves the characters.

The Demon's Lexicon is a really well-paced, entertaining debut novel that will definitely appeal to fantasy/YA novel fans. Lexicon follows brothers Nick and Alan. They are magician killing, demon slaying teens with polar opposite personalites. Nick, our main voice in the story, is honestly not the most likeable character. He's the typical bad boy type that all the girls swoon over and his attitude never really progresses much past his nonchalant hard glares and his dry, sarcastic, low-blow comments. His brother Alan, on the other hand, is a kind, sensitive, shy boy who is far more relatable and easy to like.

The story takes off with a demon marking a local teen named Jamie whose pink-haired goth-like sister, Mae, has caught Alan's eye. These marks ultimately mean Jamie's body will soon be taken over by a demon. Mae and Jamie go to Alan and Nick (Not sure how they knew to do this) for help, much to Nick's shock and anger. Mayhem ensues, leading to Alan getting marked also and a massive struggle to save both boys begins. The teens wind up journeying across England to track Magicians they can slaughter in order to remove the demon markings. It sounds a little complicated, but it's really not.

The book was well paced and fun. It gave me a strong 'SUPERNATURAL' vibe because of the two demon-hunting brothers (kind of like Sam and Dean!) and that was pretty cool.

The only problems I had with the story would be the actual character dialogue and the lack of personality in our protagonists. I had no idea the book was set in England until about 40 pages into it when the boys commented on possibly driving to Scotland. I was a little confused since there was no hint of Brit-slang and the author didn't really give off much of a European "feel" to the characters...but, that is a minor concern. Teen readers will probably thrive on the fact that the lyricism is easy to understand. The BIGGEST issue would be the characters. I despised Nick. He was a prick. Alan was nice, but was never really in the forefront of the story. Mae was as wooden as wooden as pinnochio and you never really got to know much about her besides the fact that she was wealthy, had pink hair and had enough talent to dance with Nick in a circle to summon a demon. Other then that, she was as flat as an ironing board. Jamie was confusing and should have been brought into the story more. His akward, nervous, bumbling habits brought a little humor to the book and he was a small bright-spot in the dark world that Nick and Alan were fighting in. I was also a bit unsure of his sexuality. I think that might confuse some teens a bit, but I'm guessing most won't care.

Overall, fun book...easy to read, lots of action and adventure, fast paced and interesting. Biggest issue with it would be the mean main character and the lack of development in the supporting characters. I would read more from this author though!

Sarah Rees Brennan is immensely talented. She has extraordinary gifts: she can craft true and compelling characters, write clever, believable dialogue, and suddenly twist a humorous moment into a shockingly sharp tug at your heartstrings. She just managed not to do any of that here, in her first published work.

The elephant in the review-room is this: she's been writing fan-fiction for years, and most of us who ran out to acquire her book are longtime fans. While it may not be fair on some level to compare original work to fan-fiction, it's possible, and necessary, to compare mediocre writing to fantastic writing.

This novel is awash in the cliches of the genre: there's a spunky love interest teen girl with spunky dyed hair and not another character trait in sight but her irrepressible spunk; there's an OMG-my-secret-parentage plotline; and there's an embarrassingly shiny-lipped emo boy on the cover making it clear that much brooding is to be found inside. Only one character is remotely lovable, and even he treads dangerously near the Comic Relief Sidekick stock cut-out character. The rest are wood. Brennan has demonstrated her ability to breathe life into the roughest sketch of a minor character, but the minor characters in Lexicon are less than one-dimensional -- they're naked plot-pushers. And that's not the end of the world; the plot is kind of interesting, once it gets going in the last hundred pages. But it's nothing special.

I desperately wanted to like this book. Brennan has been -- no exaggeration -- my favorite author for years. She's brightened my life countless times, and I will buy every book she ever publishes because I owe her for all that joy. But I'd looked forward to buying copies for everyone I know. I wanted to be able to recommend her. And I honestly don't know what went wrong with this book -- whether her genius was somehow edited away, or whether her body was taken over by aliens (sophomoric, purple-prose-prone aliens!), but it is a tremendous let-down either way.

Here's hoping sincerely that Sarah comes back for Book Two.

Nick has been running from magicians all his life because his mother stole something valuable from them. He and his brother, Alan, have spent their lives trying to keep her safe...but all isn't as it seems.

Nick isn't exactly your typical teenage boy. He's fiercly devoted to Alan, but he's also devoid of feeling. Because of this lack of emotion, I found it difficult to connect with him. Or even like him.

It's really hard to write a book with an unlikable character, but it's been done. INEXCUSABLE by Chris Lynch is a great example. The key is to give the character some redeeming quality, something that will allow the reader to empathize or at least understand. Unfortunately, there is no such connection to Nick. Combine that with the so-so writing, and I would have set this story aside after twenty pages. But I'm an obsessive book-finisher, so I kept going. And hated Nick more with each page.

His personality is explained at the end, which is when the story gets interesting. Though, the author dropped some clues along the way so it wasn't really surprising. I would have preferred to read more of this aspect of Nick, rather than the constant reminders that he feels nothing.

Which brings me to the biggest inconsistency I saw in this book. If Nick has no feelings, that means he doesn't understand them. And if he doesn't understand them, how can he say he doesn't have them?

When I say I feel nothing, I know exactly what that means because there are times when my emotions overwhelm me. So, I know what it feels like when they aren't there, because I know what it feels like when they're there.

But Nick has never had them. So, to him, this lack of emotion is a normal state of being. I had trouble with him repeating that he felt nothing, because that implies that he knows what it's like to feel something. But he doesn't, because he's never known emotion. So there's no way he could understand the lack of it.

It would have been more plausible for him to not understand the question, and then either get annoyed or try to figure out what all that feeling stuff meant.

I also think this is why I never connected with Nick. If he had tried to understand what it was all about, especially since he has such a strong connection with Alan, then I would have had some respect for Nick. As it was, I didn't.

Though, I understand this is the first of a trilogy. So maybe there will be more exploration in Nick's future.

In Sarah Rees Brennan's debut novel, The Demon's Lexicon, two brothers must fight against the evil magicians who seek them and the talisman their mother wears. Another set of siblings, Mae and Jamie, seek out the brothers' help when it is discovered that Jamie has been marked by a demon. The four teens, and now awkward friends, set out to find a way to remove Jamie's mark and then that of Alan, who is marked in the process of trying to help the others. A race against time begins, as Alan and Jamie must have their marks removed before demons ravage their bodies and souls, all while avoiding the magicians who still seek to harm them.

While many others enjoyed this book, it fell flat for me. The writing felt awkward and forced, as though the author was trying to make things sound important. Poor pacing plagued the novel, and things didn't pick up until the final 100 pages. When things did pick up, the villains were portrayed as mostly inept in spite of the frightening powers we've been told they possess. Though the book had an original set-up about demons and magicians, there were problems with the mythology that made me question the story. Additionally, the main character Nick was emotionally distant and unlikeable. Though this is a significant plot point and one that is explained later in the book, it made it difficult to connect with him as the main narrator (third-person). Secondary characters, like Jamie and Mae, felt underdeveloped.

Despite these qualms, I did see glimmers of a strong story with potential for the books to come in the series. The story differs from typical YA paranormal fare by focusing on demons and magicians, and the darker tone should appeal to fans of dark urban fantasy. Also, instead of being a romance, it was refreshing to see sibling relationships as the focus. When hints of romantic tension did enter the story, they didn't take away from the main story arc about the brothers. Finally, as mentioned, things did pick up in the final chapters and some of those plot surprises were both creative and frightening.

I know that Rees Brennan already has a devoted fan base, both due to her previous fanfic work and then this original novel. Though I won't be rushing out to get it, I hope that the sequel, The Demon's Covenant (The Demon's Lexicon Trilogy), expands on her original story concept and takes things to a higher level.

This story has so many inconsistencies, it's hard to count them all. The biggest thing for me was though that the author states that souls fight demonic invasions, which in the end destroys the body, and then she has a demon invade a fetus without any resistance. I mean what did the unborn child's soul do? It just jumped ship? Just because the unborn child is small, doesn't mean its soul is also.

Then there's the problem of four teenagers - two of them without fighting experience - going for a whole coven of magicians in their lair. Did anyone really think that was a good idea? And when the whole thing goes pear-shaped, the elder brother saves the day by short-wiring the fuse box? I mean what kind of magicians are those who are lost without electricity and cannot even conjure up some lighting? Not very professional ones, I fear.

Of course then there's the inevitable "I'm your father"-moment which no YA novel can do without, even if it's slightly modified in this case.

I had no problem with the main character's "unlikeability" others have bemourned. In fact I did like him best because of his immensely practical approach to problems and his unsentimentality. Please never get "nice", Nick!

Sadly the other characters were cardboard cut-outs one has read in other incarnations several times already. The philantropic nerd, the baby-goth, the fashionable gay guy - hello, there you are again!

And well, Alan, I would have preferred you not setting a demon able to destroy the world free just because *you* trust him. I mean it's a bit presumptuous for a nineteen year old to decide the fate of the world apparently without giving any thought to the possibility that he could be totally wrong.

The dialogue consists mainly of "witty" oneliners quipped at each other - which is getting more and more troublesome, because every YA author seems to try this now. Yes, I get you find witticism utterly cool - sadly it's not enough to carry a story.

So, I really can't recommend to buy this book - go borrow it, if you must - because you can find the same quality of writing for free on the net.