Stephanie Meyer seems to have plunged us all into a craving for YA Urban Fantasy with brooding, mysterious males and teenage misfit heroines, and The Demon Lexicon delivers all this for us in a concise ( by Twilight standards) 322 pages.
As the book’s blurb tells us:
Sixteen year old Nick knows that demons are real. Magicians call up demons in exchange for their power. The demons can appear in any shape, show you marvels, promise you anything – until you invite them in and receive their mark. What happens next? First you get possessed. Then you die.
Nick’s been on the run his whole life, ever since his mother stole a charm from the most feared magician of them all, and the only person he trusts is his brother Alan. Alan’s just been marked by a demon. Only Nick can save him, but to do so he must face the magicians – and kill them. The hunt is on. And Nick’s going to discover things he never dreams were out there...
Nick is the original dangerous male: he has impenetrable, dark eyes and a lithe, muscular body and he can do things with knives and swords that would strike fear into a Samurai’s heart. Worse still, he feels no fear. Or pity. So, when his soft-hearted brother agrees to help pink-haired Mae and her demon-marked brother Jamie, he is disgusted.
Mae, however, is no Bella. She is a tough, feisty number, whose ability to look after herself is only marred by her inexperience in wielding weapons. Indeed, the reader senses that she grows in stature as the novel progresses. And this may explain why the follow-up, The Devil’s Covenant, gives her the major role.
From the beginning, you know that these two are destined for each other. But as the blurb indicates, this is no love story, rather a quest to save Nick’s brother Alan (and Mae’s brother, Jamie too). And as a quest, it works well. There’s no shortage of action, a fast pace and plenty of spooky, even stomach-churning scenes. (A particular favourite is when someone’s eyes turn to black beetles and run out of his eye sockets, down his body, and across the room to take a closer look at Nick!)
Nevertheless, love, in all its forms, is a powerful theme in the story. Alan’s love for Nick governs all his actions. Mae’s love for Jamie enables her to undertake tasks that horrify her. And clearly, love is the key to rescuing Nick when he discovers the secret his mother and brother have been keeping from him.
And this was the one thing that bothered me: it seemed to me that Brennan had set up her world of magicians and demons so well that it is impossible to see a way out of Nick’s predicament at the end. She has set herself a huge task in the sequel and I will be very intrigued to see if she can pull it off.
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