Book Review: The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan

You know when you read a book and it just blows you away and you can't stop thinking about it and you just want everyone to read it so you can rave about it together? Yeah, this was one of those books for me.

The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan

Excerpt: 

Gerald lifted a hand and the lid of a bin rose and spun in midair like a ninja’s star, missing one of the boys by an inch and striking sparks off the wall.

“Funny how these freak winds happen,” he observed in his friendly way.

The boy who the bin lid had almost hit took several steps back. Gerald gestured easily and the lid rose again, quivering in the air.

A slow, small creak came from the darkest corner of the alley. Even the boy being menaced by the airborne bin lid turned his head to see the rusty old drainpipe peeling itself from the wall.

The bin lid was pinwheeling in the air now, a blur of silver. The drainpipe was bowing toward them, tall and thin, looming out of the night like a spindly, starving giant who had finally spotted food.

Gerald laughed indulgently as if he was showing them all a trick, as if he’d just produced doves from his sleeve rather than killer drainpipes.

“Run,” he suggested.

Review:

This book is the second in a trilogy. I enjoyed the first one, and this one took all the great things from The Demon's Lexicon and made them better.

What can I say? I laughed. I cried. (Although the latter may or may not have been the cold medication . . .) Mostly, I couldn't put it down. And when I finished, I sat my husband down and proceeded to tell him everything I loved about it. He was thrilled. Or something.

A friend recently said to me, "You read books for the relationships, don't you?"

Yes. Yes, I do. And this was a terrific exploration of relationships with characters that I absolutely love. Not just romantic relationships, but all kinds. Parent-child, sibling, friend. And, okay, there's lots of romance in there too.

But, seriously, I loved what Sarah Rees Brennan did with POV's in this series. The Demon's Lexicon (book 1) was told from Nick's point of view and The Demon's Covenant (book 2) was told from Mae's point of view. In both books, I'm amazed by how much I love all the characters when seen from the POV of someone else.

So, if you're in the mood for something dark and gripping, give this series a try.

Characters We Love to Hate and Why I Struggle to Write Them

A couple people commented earlier this week about characters that they loved hating. This is actually a rather sensitive topic for me, so I thought I'd blog about it and you could tell me to stop being silly.

See, when I first started writing, I joined a writer's group. I knew nothing about picking a writer's group and just started attending one that a friend went to. They were all older than I was, had been writing longer than me, were louder than I was, and therefore their opinion was more valuable than mine.

I started working on a novel with a brat for a main character. It was based off of a fairy tale and the girl was supposed to be awful, but learned her lesson over the course of the story. I had SO much fun writing her. It just made me happy to delve into that obnoxious side of me.

Then I brought it to critique group. And they trashed it. No one said anything positive about it, they just told me how horrible she was and how you could never have a main character like that and I had to change it because it was just plain awful. Awful, awful, awful.

This was my first experience with critiquing and I was devastated.

I went home and ripped my story apart. I changed the main character into the most milk-soppy person you never wanted to meet and went from there.

I learned a lot writing that story, but I never loved it like I did with the first main character and it will never again see the light of day. Which is probably good.

The thing that really got to me was that a couple months after I changed the main character, one of the guys in the group--one of the quieter ones--looked at me and said, "Why did you change your main character?"

I shrugged and said it was because everyone hated her.

Then he said something I've never forgotten: "But I loved hating her."

(This was the first in a very long string of lessons to try to teach me not to listen to everyone's advice. But that's another story.)

Now, I can understand not wanting the POV character to be completely dreadful, but that whole experience is still haunting me. My current WIP is full of selfish, stupid, crazy people. Who is going to want to read this? Do you really enjoy reading about characters you love to hate? Who are some of your favorite characters that you hated?

Just so you know...

I write like
Oscar Wilde

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Falling In Love

In my last post, I talked about the importance of character in hooking readers. But what makes a reader fall in love with a character? Here are some suggestions I've heard over the years:

1. Show them doing something altruistic. I went to a writing conference with Brandon Sanderson a couple years ago and he told us that we could always tell what character we should like by how they treated the dog. If they petted it, we should like them. If they kicked it, though, we should be wary.

Of course, the dog bit makes me think of The Young Victoria. We first see Sir John petting the dog and then, as his true colors are revealed, we see him kick the dog out of a fit of temper.

In any case, the first time I fell in love with Katniss from The Hunger Games was when she volunteered to take Prim's place. That's a powerful moment. And, if you haven't read The Hunger Games, you should.

2. Show something that the character loves, but can't have. In the movie She's the Man--which is an amusing take on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night--the main character loves soccer more than anything. And the girls' team is cut.

Pretty much everything that happens in this movie comes as a result of her desire to play soccer when she doesn't have a team anymore.

3. Have a character that readers want to be friends with.

I love opening a book and feeling an immediate connection with the main character. The most recent example of this is Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins.

I was immediately pulled in by the character's voice. She was frank, funny, and, yes, I stayed up far too late reading it. There was an incident where I hid out in the bathroom giggling over it, but perhaps it's best not to talk about that.

4. Make the character attractive. This doesn't refer to just physical attractiveness, though. To me, it's much more interesting if the attractiveness comes from their personality.

For example--this time a real life one--my kids are taking swim lessons right now. Their teacher is a teenage boy who is, I'd say, average looking. Nothing to really drool over, but not repulsive. But watching him and the way he pays attention to the kids, encourages them, and listens to and answers ALL of their questions (which, as a stay-at-home mom, I'm really impressed by), he's a lot more attractive than I originally thought. And that kind of attractiveness is a lot more interesting than the slobber inducing kind. A lot less wet, too. Well, apart from the fact that he teaches swim lessons, but whatever.

The best example from a book that I can think of is Kent from Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn.

What about you? Do you have any suggestions for making a character appealing for a reader?

The Importance of Character

On Saturday, my husband and I went to see Inception.

Amazing movie. I left the theater wanting to see it again. Immediately. Plus, it has one of the coolest fight scenes ever. I have to admit, it took me a while to figure out what was going on. But that didn't matter to me because I'd already been hooked and was willing to go with it.

What hooked me? The characters.

(For those of you who have seen it and want to know the exact moment I was hooked, it was the phone call between Cobb, Phillipa, and James.)

Something I've realized about myself is that I'm much more willing to go through a story with a character I love even if the plot isn't as strong as I'd like (which was not the case with Inception, just so you know--the plot was fascinating as well) than I am willing to go through a great story with someone I don't like.

I like to look at movies to see what they do to make me fall in love with a character because movies can't fall back on explaining things. They have to show it. If they try to tell me why I should love the character, it doesn't work. Of course, it's much harder to show a reader why they should love a character than it is to show the same thing in a movie. But that's what makes writing so much more fun, right?

So, what about you? What makes you fall in love with a character?

Writing and Camping

I spent several days last week holed up in a one room cabin with eleven girls between the ages of 12 and 16, along with three other leaders. Crazy as it sounds (and minor drama episodes aside), we had a really great time. I even enjoyed climbing up a rope ladder, running across a suspension bridge, and jumping off.

I should mention that I don't like heights. I really, really don't like heights. I even get vertigo going down stairs sometimes, so I'm pretty proud of myself. Even if I do look convinced that I'm going to die in the picture. Which I was. But I was also entertained by the idea, planted by the missionaries running the high course, that we were being chased by a huge gorilla, because that's what happens in the movies.

And, whew, I made it safely away from the gorilla.

Between running from imaginary gorillas and then chasing one of our girls around the cabin (so she wouldn't take a nap and stay up all night...again...laughing at nothing), I did have a few minutes to work on my novel. I knew I couldn't have a laptop at camp, so I did sometime I've never tried before and printed it out.

(I haven't done it before because I don't like "wasting" so much paper.)

As far as revising goes, printing it out is The Best Thing I've ever done. Seriously. Looking at the printed word is very different from looking at a screen, and I am a lot more critical of printed words. I didn't make it through more than 20 pages, but I have ideas how to fix the issues in those pages, especially where it drags. I hadn't even noticed the dragging until I had it printed and I could see how many pages were spent on my main character wandering aimlessly alone by herself again and again and again.

Okay, it wasn't that bad. But it can be better--lots better--and I can see that now.

I know everyone else has probably already figured this out, but if you haven't tried printing out your WIP to edit it, I highly recommend it. You can even print it it out back-to-back, two pages per side to save paper, but try it. Believe it or not, it'll be almost as much fun as running across bridges while you're chased by rabid gorillas.