But before we get to the spoilers, I will first provide a link to the author's talk about this series, which I will be addressing a bit in my review.
First of all, let me address the spoiler thing I referred to in my non-spoiler review. Near the end of The Demon's Lexicon, Nick finds out that they are not actually brothers, that the father that raised them was Alan's father and Olivia, the mother that hates Nick and likes Alan, is Nick's mother, and Alan had this whole other family that he had been keeping secret from Nick, and Nick and Alan have a huge fight about it. Nick decides there is no reason for them to continue living and fighting demons together, as Alan can get out of this lifestyle. Each is under the impression that the other does not care for him, and they both say as much (or at least Nick does, I have trouble remembering) but their actions prove that this is definitely not the case. Nick immediately goes to tell Olivia that he will be taking care of her now, that she is not Alan's problem. This is important because not only does Olivia hate Nick, Nick does not care for olivia at all. In fact, earlier in the book he says he will not protect or take care of her should anything happen to Alan, as a way of forcing Alan to do what he wants. By informing Olivia that Alan is leaving them and that it will just be the two of them from now on, Nick is promising to take care of someone he hates and who hates him, just so that Alan can be free from this dangerous lifestyle. This was probably meant to break my heart, but as I could see that they really loved each other, I only laughed at the boys for being such idiots. Onto the similarity between Nick and Mae's relationship, Mae makes it pretty clear from the beginning that she has the hots for Nick, and while she also gets along with Alan (both on a friend and more-than-friend basis), and is sort of seeing some other guy whose name escapes me, and despite her seeing the whole demon thing as a deal-breaker, she is still drawn to him. And Nick keeps shutting her down. What I love most though, near the beginning, when they are taking a walk and Mae is thinking about how cute the demon boy is but is not putting any of that into action, is how Nick totally broaches the subject first, and says she should go out with Alan because Nick will never ask her out. Which is totally hilarious, because she answers the freaking door thinking it is some other boy from her school, and hasn't made any sort of romantic overture at him this whole scene, and yet he feels the need to tell her that no, this is seriously not going to happen, get over it. Which sounds pretty telling of what is on his mind, don't you think? Oh Nick, you think that because can't consciously lie that everything you say must be true, but you just can't understand the many feels warring inside your pretty little head.
Now, onto the link I had above. Sarah Rees Brennan mentioned on her tumblr that she heard a lot of people did not think the second and third book in this series were as serious as the first book, and that the main arguments for this criticism was that there was more romance in the later books and that they feature girl narrators. This made me pause a bit, as my personal opinion of The Demon's Covenant was that I did not like it quite as much as The Demon's Lexicon (though I did like it a great deal, rated 4 stars on Goodreads). After reading this, I had to evaluate why I came to this conclusion.
Looking back, part of it is the romance bits. I like romance as a subpart of any book, but I very rarely like romance as the main storyline. I have to be in the mood for it, it is not usually in my default of reading material. Moreover, I have been trained from mainstream culture that in order to have literary merit, a book cannot have a happy ending. The only way romances don't end happily ever after is if they end in tragedy or a bittersweet breakup, with the narrator knowing he/she (but usually he) is better off out of the relationship or having had the relationship or something (unless we're talking about The Fault In Our Stars, because John Green totally finds a loophole there but that's unrelated spoilers so let's just move on from that shall we).
Anyway, The Demon's Lexicon has romantic moments between Nick and Mae (and a little bit of hinting at Nick and Sin and Alan and Mae), but the last cute moment between Nick and Mae is cut short when Mae pulls a 'bitch, please' moment, calls Nick out on his trying to use her to make Alan jealous, and declares that it is not an either/or situation, that she can very happily find and date someone outside of the Ryves family. So while there is mostly a happy ending to this novel, the romance between them has been temporarily squashed.
The Demon's Covenant, on the other hand, has lots more romance. There's Mae and Nick, Mae and Alan, Mae and Other Dude Whose Name Escapes Me, Jamie and Gerard/Gerald (I can't remember which it is, sorry), Jamie and Other Dude Whose Name Escapes Me, Sin and Nick, implied Sin and Gerard/Gerald though it turns out to be a lie. There is romance oozing out of this book, though most of it does not end happily ever after either. And while Mae is spends the book juggling 2 guys and pining for a third, she ends up learning that her milkshake does not, in fact, bring all the boys to the yard, as Other Dude Whose Name Escapes Me turns out to be secretly gay and crushing on Jamie, Alan lied to her and used her in part of his plot, and Nick refuses to step foot in her yard at all. But as the relationship with the most hardship and therefore most likely to be the one the readers care about (aka Nick and Mae) ends in this book with them making out, it gives the appearance of a happy ending there, even though I know they are not actually together yet.
Furthermore, we have the narrators themselves. Nick is a messed-up demon, who has trouble communicating, who hates physical contact, who can hardly interact with other people let alone empathize with them. Take away the demon powers, the lack of empathy, and the nonchalance with torturing people, and Nick Ryves is basically me. Now, realistically speaking, I am probably much more well adjusted than Nick, but I really related to him and all his faults, especially his jealousy towards Alan's quick relationship with Jamie and Mae. Mae, on the other hand, is a pretty well adjusted teenage girl, or at least was well adjusted until she murdered someone at the end of the last book, and though she dresses like one would expect a Manic Pixie Dream Girl would, she makes it pretty damn clear at the end of The Demon's Lexicon that she is not here to fix or be used by anyone (see 2 paragraphs up). And while romance plays a much bigger part in this novel, there is still a lot of other plots that effect her in a way that does not just categorize her as someone's girlfriend, sister, or daughter. But none of these were things I personally could relate to, and that did make the book slightly less enjoyable for me.
After considering all of this, I have decided that I still like The Demon's Lexicon slightly more than the Demon's Covenant, but not nearly as much as I originally thought.
Thanks for reading, I'll be back with another review soon.
Happy reading,
Katie
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