soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2011-11-26 10:55 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2011-11-26 10:55 pm
The Demon's Surrender, by Sarah Rees Brennan
ugleblurgle okay I am writing a post because I cannot currently work on my NaNo becaues there are people talking and I cannot write when there are people talking! It is a problem.
I read The Demon's Surrender today, and I keep on having to keep myself from spelling that word with a "u" in the last syllable. SCHWA, MY NEMESIS. Okay usually I think schwas are pretty awesome but sometimes they are problematic when it comes to spelling. English should have a letter schwa; it would make certain things far simpler, probably.
ANYWAYS why am I getting diverted by discussion of linguistics? Oh right because I am a) easily distracted and b) a fan of words and things about words.
OKAY TALKING ABOUT SURRENDER NOW.
This book is EXCELLENT! Of course it is. Sarah Rees Brennan has proved in the first two books that she really knows how to write. But for some reason this book just did not grab me emotionally the same way the first two did. It was still very good! I still really liked all the characters! But I was not clutching the book to my chest and making high-pitched noises the way I was for the first two books.
I am not sure why! One hypothesis is that, well, I have a sneaking suspicion I actually read these books for the sibling relationships. Nick-Alan and Mae-Jamie are both wonderfully fraught-yet-full-of-love and give me all the feelings. But Sin's siblings are both little kids, which means that her relationship with them is kind of inevitably less complicated and less fraught. Oh, there are other things making that relationship complicated, but they are complicated only in one direction, because Sin is the only one who's old enough for her feelings to get complications. The kids are more or less cyphers, MacGuffins that cause Sin to act instead of having much personhood in their own right.
And okay this book is also more focused on the romance than the previous ones. Like, there was certainly romantical interest happening previously but they were mostly a background while platonic feelings were the focus, but in this one a lot of the viewpoint character's main Complicated Feelings were about her love interest, and I was surprised to discover that actually although I'm happy to ship all the things, the ships in this series are not actually a thing I care about particularly.
And also Sin herself is just...less my kind of person, I guess? She's awesome and I totally understand where she's coming from and all that, but she's also just not really my character type, I guess.
And also this book was more about the plot and the fighting and stuff than the previous books, and those things tend to be less my thing.
So all my problems with this book are all about my super personal reactions. Which I guess makes sense, because the things I loved best about the previous books were also super personal reactions! This is a book series where my favourite part of it is the way it makes me FEEL THINGS, and feelings are not a thing that are quantifiable. Things can be definitively awesome and still leave one mostly unmoved. As this one mostly did.
It disappoints me that this book did not get me in my feelings to the same degree as the others, but I am mostly okay with that, because I am sure that other people who are different from me WERE gotten in the feelings by this book, because different people are different and that's okay.
And I still have LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of feelings about the series as a whole!
And okay I guess this book DID get me in my feelings? Like, plenty more than the average book. It was just to such a lesser degree than the previous two books that it was notable.
So.
That's a thing.
I read The Demon's Surrender today, and I keep on having to keep myself from spelling that word with a "u" in the last syllable. SCHWA, MY NEMESIS. Okay usually I think schwas are pretty awesome but sometimes they are problematic when it comes to spelling. English should have a letter schwa; it would make certain things far simpler, probably.
ANYWAYS why am I getting diverted by discussion of linguistics? Oh right because I am a) easily distracted and b) a fan of words and things about words.
OKAY TALKING ABOUT SURRENDER NOW.
This book is EXCELLENT! Of course it is. Sarah Rees Brennan has proved in the first two books that she really knows how to write. But for some reason this book just did not grab me emotionally the same way the first two did. It was still very good! I still really liked all the characters! But I was not clutching the book to my chest and making high-pitched noises the way I was for the first two books.
I am not sure why! One hypothesis is that, well, I have a sneaking suspicion I actually read these books for the sibling relationships. Nick-Alan and Mae-Jamie are both wonderfully fraught-yet-full-of-love and give me all the feelings. But Sin's siblings are both little kids, which means that her relationship with them is kind of inevitably less complicated and less fraught. Oh, there are other things making that relationship complicated, but they are complicated only in one direction, because Sin is the only one who's old enough for her feelings to get complications. The kids are more or less cyphers, MacGuffins that cause Sin to act instead of having much personhood in their own right.
And okay this book is also more focused on the romance than the previous ones. Like, there was certainly romantical interest happening previously but they were mostly a background while platonic feelings were the focus, but in this one a lot of the viewpoint character's main Complicated Feelings were about her love interest, and I was surprised to discover that actually although I'm happy to ship all the things, the ships in this series are not actually a thing I care about particularly.
And also Sin herself is just...less my kind of person, I guess? She's awesome and I totally understand where she's coming from and all that, but she's also just not really my character type, I guess.
And also this book was more about the plot and the fighting and stuff than the previous books, and those things tend to be less my thing.
So all my problems with this book are all about my super personal reactions. Which I guess makes sense, because the things I loved best about the previous books were also super personal reactions! This is a book series where my favourite part of it is the way it makes me FEEL THINGS, and feelings are not a thing that are quantifiable. Things can be definitively awesome and still leave one mostly unmoved. As this one mostly did.
It disappoints me that this book did not get me in my feelings to the same degree as the others, but I am mostly okay with that, because I am sure that other people who are different from me WERE gotten in the feelings by this book, because different people are different and that's okay.
And I still have LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of feelings about the series as a whole!
And okay I guess this book DID get me in my feelings? Like, plenty more than the average book. It was just to such a lesser degree than the previous two books that it was notable.
So.
That's a thing.