Demon's Surrender (Sarah Rees Brennan)
Jun. 21st, 2011 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn4/5. Note that this will contain mild spoilers for all three books -- nothing big, but if you don't want to know who hooks up with whom, don't read under the cut.
I had a complicated reaction to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sarahtales' Demon's Surrender, and because of this I expect this discussion will be a little more on the rambly all-over-the-place side that even my normal state. You've been warned! On the whole, I liked it quite a bit, although I preferred Demon's Covenant. (My sister liked this one the best, though.) This book didn't change my opinion that Brennan is head and shoulders above the vast majority of YA writers today -- she actually thinks about things, and her books have quite a bit more subtext than "REPRESSION = EVIL, ALSO TWU LUV!" (Not that I've been overexposed to that recently, with all these YA dystopias I've been fed...) In addition, she's not afraid to try new things, which (although not sufficient) is necessary for a writer to be really good; if you're not always pushing the boundaries and trying to do things that aren't safe, you aren't ever going to be a great, well, anything. (I talked more about this, and what I perceived as its failure in the Hunger Games books, here (spoilers for the HG books).)
One (just one!) of the overall themes of these books is an examination of love, and it's most obvious in this book. (And rather better done than the parallel discussion in Covenant, I thought.) The cost of love; love and performance; love of family; romantic love; love spread out over all these things. Along these lines, let me say that one of the things that really amazed me about this book was how Brennan completely changed my view of Alan. This is another thing that good writers do: they understand that people are three-dimensional, not two-dimensional cross-sections that one person sees. Another person, looking from another angle, is liable to see a completely different cross-section.
So, Alan. We learn in the first two books that he's a really nice, sweet, family-oriented guy, very gentle, and by the way is good at killing and is a pathological liar. Who lies. All the time. To everyone. Even the people he loves and that he wants to love him. Especially the people he loves and that he wants to love him. Really not the sort of guy you want to be with. I was anti-rooting for him in Covenant ("please don't get together with Mae! Mae, run away! Now!") because, ergh, pathological liar!
...And in Surrender, this is turned upside down to where I was actively SO rooting for Sin/Alan. Alan doesn't change. He's still a really nice pathological liar. But Sin is a performer (though I think there was just one too many references to this; okay, I see it) and gets it. And does it herself. And can see through him, or at least can get that she needs to see through him. They just work as a couple; Mae is (in a certain sense) a little too naive, and from a little too different a world, to understand Alan, and vice versa. But through Sin's perspective, we start understanding Alan and where he's coming from. He wants Mae and what Mae represents so very much that he can't help screwing it up. And he's already lied to himself before he's lied to Mae, by telling himself this is what he needs. And he basically dooms himself to failure. But of course we can't see any of that from Mae's perspective (which is one of the reasons why changing narrators is such a great thing to do).
This relates to what the emotional center of the book was for me: when Sin refuses to abandon Lydie and is thrown out of the Market. No. When Sin not only refuses to abandon Lydie, but she refuses to even act like she is. Because you may act and act and perform and your entire life may be a performance, but there is a place you have to draw the line. You have to decide when to perform and when to love and when you can't do both, and Sin knows. She's got what I think of as that core of integrity -- the same core Veronica Mars (who also lies, cheats, steals, etc.) has; and this is why I root for Sin/Alan: because Alan needs that core of integrity, and furthermore he needs to be with someone who understands the difference between the core and the rest of life. (Mae is too honest, really, as are most of us. Sin might be able to explain it to her intellectually, but Mae would never really get the difference. Neither would I, if it were my boyfriend, for that matter.)
Aside from this moment, however, I felt that there was the lack of a true cathartic moment, at least in my opinion (and this made me like the book a little less well than I might have otherwise). Lexicon had the amazing moment where Alan says... well, not revealing spoilers, but where he makes the title of the book come into blazing focus. This book didn't have anything like that, though third books of trilogies often do. I think Surrender was ambitious and trying to do a lot of things, which didn't really leave room for a big runup to a sharp diamond point like that (which Lexicon was able to do, because the whole book, along with the major plot, was basically running up to that sentence by Alan) -- the Sin/Lydie moment was marvelous, but it was blunted by everything else that was going on as well as by the fact that Lydie never becomes a really fleshed-out character.
The book also didn't, I felt, even really have the huge climactic apocalyptic scene that you often find in fantasy trilogies, even though (as they must) they defeat the Big Bad and so on. While I was reading it, I thought it was a weakness, because it diffuses the impact of the book (and I think part of it is in fact a bit of a pacing-the-tension problem, partially brought on by the first book raising the stakes so high that anything after it was somewhat anticlimactic). But after I swished it around in my head for a while, I decided it may also play into one of the things the books is about.
Which is that the world isn't black and white. The heroes in this book do some pretty despicable things. At least one of them is objectively, well, evil. (Subjectively, of course, we're rooting for him.) They pretty much all are at the point here where they kill without really thinking about it. The end solution to the main problem, while not involving quite as much violence as some of the main characters (and not just the evil one, either) would like, is not devoid of what is, when you come right down to it, some pretty horrifying torture. Although I am certain that Brennan never loses sight of the fact that this is (to understate) not ideal, Sin isn't the viewpoint character to really delve into a discussion of this. (Jamie or Alan would have been -- they're the ones who think about things like this -- but neither of them could possibly have worked as a POV character for this book.) There's a little bit of a letdown for me in the end along with the thrill of what she's doing -- sort of a, okay, wow, whoa, she went there! But now we're not really going to talk about it?-- but that I don't really see how to fix within the structure she has (which works really well for a lot of other things -- see for example my discussion of Sin/Alan above). And as I was saying, it's awesome that she went there at all; it's way too often I feel that YA books tend to pad things so that the protagonists never do anything bad, or when they do, it's whitewashed so that we can still think them sympathetic (Katniss, for example, kills kids in the Hunger Games, but those kids are always characterized as Very Evil And Pretty Much Subhuman). Oh, the villains are villainous, all right, but the deal with the bad guys is structured so that you can't help but realize that a) they're human, and b) wait a second, they're all human... but those over there are getting a really bad deal.
Oh yeah, and for those following along with now-I-am-getting-educated-in-Issues, Sin is black. I think Brennan handles this awfully well, by which I mean that she is true to what I experience as a non-white person in a white culture. That is, when I think of my identity, I'm... someone who does technical work, a parent, a spouse, someone who does music, someone who reads and writes ranty things about what I read, someone who messes around with shiny things, an agnostic Mormon... and somewhere down there we get to, yes, and I'm Asian, right. It's an integral part of my identity, but it's not what I first think of when I think of my identity. (Being female is a little different, since it's more mixed in with some of my other identities, but we can discuss that some other day.) BUT. When other people see me, they can't see the technical stuff and the music and the ranty book discussions. They see that I'm an Asian woman. And that's what they react to. And that's the way Sin is handled: it's part of her identity but it's not most what she identifies as (she identifies more as a dancer, a Market participant, a sister, a daughter), but it's an integral part of how people react to her (and how she then handles the reaction). And I'm not even going to get into the discussion of disability and reaction to such that is also happening in this book. Yeah. There's a lot going on!
(Also -- I couldn't find a good place to put this so I'm just sticking it here -- be warned that the first chapter is written in a somewhat more florid style than the rest of the book; if you don't like the first chapter, which is in the nature of a prologue and has way too many similes for my taste at least, don't give up.)
Anyway. In conclusion: watch Brennan. She takes the risks and she thinks about things, and I think that's totally awesome even when I don't agree with her.
I had a complicated reaction to
sarahtales' Demon's Surrender, and because of this I expect this discussion will be a little more on the rambly all-over-the-place side that even my normal state. You've been warned! On the whole, I liked it quite a bit, although I preferred Demon's Covenant. (My sister liked this one the best, though.) This book didn't change my opinion that Brennan is head and shoulders above the vast majority of YA writers today -- she actually thinks about things, and her books have quite a bit more subtext than "REPRESSION = EVIL, ALSO TWU LUV!" (Not that I've been overexposed to that recently, with all these YA dystopias I've been fed...) In addition, she's not afraid to try new things, which (although not sufficient) is necessary for a writer to be really good; if you're not always pushing the boundaries and trying to do things that aren't safe, you aren't ever going to be a great, well, anything. (I talked more about this, and what I perceived as its failure in the Hunger Games books, here (spoilers for the HG books).)One (just one!) of the overall themes of these books is an examination of love, and it's most obvious in this book. (And rather better done than the parallel discussion in Covenant, I thought.) The cost of love; love and performance; love of family; romantic love; love spread out over all these things. Along these lines, let me say that one of the things that really amazed me about this book was how Brennan completely changed my view of Alan. This is another thing that good writers do: they understand that people are three-dimensional, not two-dimensional cross-sections that one person sees. Another person, looking from another angle, is liable to see a completely different cross-section.
So, Alan. We learn in the first two books that he's a really nice, sweet, family-oriented guy, very gentle, and by the way is good at killing and is a pathological liar. Who lies. All the time. To everyone. Even the people he loves and that he wants to love him. Especially the people he loves and that he wants to love him. Really not the sort of guy you want to be with. I was anti-rooting for him in Covenant ("please don't get together with Mae! Mae, run away! Now!") because, ergh, pathological liar!
...And in Surrender, this is turned upside down to where I was actively SO rooting for Sin/Alan. Alan doesn't change. He's still a really nice pathological liar. But Sin is a performer (though I think there was just one too many references to this; okay, I see it) and gets it. And does it herself. And can see through him, or at least can get that she needs to see through him. They just work as a couple; Mae is (in a certain sense) a little too naive, and from a little too different a world, to understand Alan, and vice versa. But through Sin's perspective, we start understanding Alan and where he's coming from. He wants Mae and what Mae represents so very much that he can't help screwing it up. And he's already lied to himself before he's lied to Mae, by telling himself this is what he needs. And he basically dooms himself to failure. But of course we can't see any of that from Mae's perspective (which is one of the reasons why changing narrators is such a great thing to do).
This relates to what the emotional center of the book was for me: when Sin refuses to abandon Lydie and is thrown out of the Market. No. When Sin not only refuses to abandon Lydie, but she refuses to even act like she is. Because you may act and act and perform and your entire life may be a performance, but there is a place you have to draw the line. You have to decide when to perform and when to love and when you can't do both, and Sin knows. She's got what I think of as that core of integrity -- the same core Veronica Mars (who also lies, cheats, steals, etc.) has; and this is why I root for Sin/Alan: because Alan needs that core of integrity, and furthermore he needs to be with someone who understands the difference between the core and the rest of life. (Mae is too honest, really, as are most of us. Sin might be able to explain it to her intellectually, but Mae would never really get the difference. Neither would I, if it were my boyfriend, for that matter.)
Aside from this moment, however, I felt that there was the lack of a true cathartic moment, at least in my opinion (and this made me like the book a little less well than I might have otherwise). Lexicon had the amazing moment where Alan says... well, not revealing spoilers, but where he makes the title of the book come into blazing focus. This book didn't have anything like that, though third books of trilogies often do. I think Surrender was ambitious and trying to do a lot of things, which didn't really leave room for a big runup to a sharp diamond point like that (which Lexicon was able to do, because the whole book, along with the major plot, was basically running up to that sentence by Alan) -- the Sin/Lydie moment was marvelous, but it was blunted by everything else that was going on as well as by the fact that Lydie never becomes a really fleshed-out character.
The book also didn't, I felt, even really have the huge climactic apocalyptic scene that you often find in fantasy trilogies, even though (as they must) they defeat the Big Bad and so on. While I was reading it, I thought it was a weakness, because it diffuses the impact of the book (and I think part of it is in fact a bit of a pacing-the-tension problem, partially brought on by the first book raising the stakes so high that anything after it was somewhat anticlimactic). But after I swished it around in my head for a while, I decided it may also play into one of the things the books is about.
Which is that the world isn't black and white. The heroes in this book do some pretty despicable things. At least one of them is objectively, well, evil. (Subjectively, of course, we're rooting for him.) They pretty much all are at the point here where they kill without really thinking about it. The end solution to the main problem, while not involving quite as much violence as some of the main characters (and not just the evil one, either) would like, is not devoid of what is, when you come right down to it, some pretty horrifying torture. Although I am certain that Brennan never loses sight of the fact that this is (to understate) not ideal, Sin isn't the viewpoint character to really delve into a discussion of this. (Jamie or Alan would have been -- they're the ones who think about things like this -- but neither of them could possibly have worked as a POV character for this book.) There's a little bit of a letdown for me in the end along with the thrill of what she's doing -- sort of a, okay, wow, whoa, she went there! But now we're not really going to talk about it?-- but that I don't really see how to fix within the structure she has (which works really well for a lot of other things -- see for example my discussion of Sin/Alan above). And as I was saying, it's awesome that she went there at all; it's way too often I feel that YA books tend to pad things so that the protagonists never do anything bad, or when they do, it's whitewashed so that we can still think them sympathetic (Katniss, for example, kills kids in the Hunger Games, but those kids are always characterized as Very Evil And Pretty Much Subhuman). Oh, the villains are villainous, all right, but the deal with the bad guys is structured so that you can't help but realize that a) they're human, and b) wait a second, they're all human... but those over there are getting a really bad deal.
Oh yeah, and for those following along with now-I-am-getting-educated-in-Issues, Sin is black. I think Brennan handles this awfully well, by which I mean that she is true to what I experience as a non-white person in a white culture. That is, when I think of my identity, I'm... someone who does technical work, a parent, a spouse, someone who does music, someone who reads and writes ranty things about what I read, someone who messes around with shiny things, an agnostic Mormon... and somewhere down there we get to, yes, and I'm Asian, right. It's an integral part of my identity, but it's not what I first think of when I think of my identity. (Being female is a little different, since it's more mixed in with some of my other identities, but we can discuss that some other day.) BUT. When other people see me, they can't see the technical stuff and the music and the ranty book discussions. They see that I'm an Asian woman. And that's what they react to. And that's the way Sin is handled: it's part of her identity but it's not most what she identifies as (she identifies more as a dancer, a Market participant, a sister, a daughter), but it's an integral part of how people react to her (and how she then handles the reaction). And I'm not even going to get into the discussion of disability and reaction to such that is also happening in this book. Yeah. There's a lot going on!
(Also -- I couldn't find a good place to put this so I'm just sticking it here -- be warned that the first chapter is written in a somewhat more florid style than the rest of the book; if you don't like the first chapter, which is in the nature of a prologue and has way too many similes for my taste at least, don't give up.)
Anyway. In conclusion: watch Brennan. She takes the risks and she thinks about things, and I think that's totally awesome even when I don't agree with her.
