I was exceedingly pleased and excited to get a starred review for The Demon’s Surrender from the Bulletin Center for Children’s Books. Starred reviews are fancy! And rarer for later books in a series. So, much celebration! And here with spoilers redacted is said fancy review…
The characters have been developed, the battle lines drawn, and the enemies and allies identified, but there are still many surprises, twists, and new alliances to be formed and broken in this final installment of Brennan’s trilogy (The Demon’s Lexicon, 7/09; The Demon’s Covenant, 6/10). The narration in this volume is focalized through Sin, a dancer in the Goblin Market who is set to take over as its leader and continue to protect it from the magicians. The key players work together to perpetrate a dangerous lie that could mean their undoing or their ultimate victory, but no matter the outcome, things are going to get bloody along the way.
Obviously, this is not a book for the uninitiated in Brennan’s world, but as the culmination of a breathlessly suspenseful series punctuated throughout with keen humor and heartbreaking emotional resonance, it’s a stunner. The author manages to turn the impossible into the inevitable at every turn, keeping readers in the same position of nail-biting tension and indecision as the characters. That tension is not as plot-driven as one might expect, however; it’s more focused on the actions of the characters who variously lead with their hearts, their heads, and their bodies, and whose emotional range is hamstrung in maddening ways by history and disposition. Readers can expect to have their mettle tested and their own hearts broken and mended multiple times as they surrender to the force of this final chapter.
Isn’t that a gorgeous review? It made me very happy, and seemed to me an excellent way to kick off the announcement that in one hour – 3pm BST / 10am EST / 7am PST on Saturday 20th August – a chat for the the Demon’s Surrender is going on here!
The password for the chat is ‘zombieboyfriend’ and people will be reading the book and talking about it: the chat is expected to run all day so come by whenever you have a moment if you think it might be fun!
I will be there answering all questions, not just about the Lexicon series but about Unspoken and writing and the meaning of life (Warning: Probably you should not listen to me about the meaning of life). I will also be putting up deleted scenes from the Lexicon series, and giving away prizes!
See you there…
Leave a Reply