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attackfishSo it has become tradition. When a new Sarah Rees Brennan book comes out, I get all ready, read the previous books in the series, and wait. And wait. And check my email and the tracking information, or call the book store, and wait, and wait, and finally, it arrives, like a shower of gold from heaven! Only not like that at all, because that was the Ancient Greeks being strange. But you know what I mean. Actually, the first time, I reread a bunch of Rees Brennan’s fanfiction, but it comes to the same thing.
With Merris, the leader of the Goblin Market’s proclamation, and Nick showing up as a student at her school, Sin’s life has not been going as well as she hoped. The Aventurine Circle, magicians who feed people to demons for their power are on the move with her friend and rival’s brother among their ranks, and she can’t get rid of the Ryves brothers, to whom she owes a debt that can never be repaid. She must stop the circle and figure out what to do with the brothers if she hopes to keep the Market and its people safe and take her place as their leader.
You have to understand, Readers, these books are the kind of books that you have to keep reading. They’re forget to eat, forget to take the dogs out, don’t look at me like that, sleeping isn’t all that important really books. They’re those kinds of books on their second, third, thirtieth, three hundredth reading. They’re good books. The dialogue is crisp and witty, the characters are larger than life, and the plot barrels along, dragging you with it. Every time I read one, I am overcome with the need to praise them, something I try to get out of the way here, at the beginning of the review, so I can spend the rest of the review trying to express just why I love them so much.
Also, I should probably warn you, I have not been able to figure out how to say what I want to say about Surrender without massive spoilers for Lexicon and Covenant. Comments, by the way, are not a Surrender spoiler free zone. Sorry.
As with Covenant, Surrender has to do without the gothic suspense that characterizes Lexicon, but if Covenant is about discovering and reveling in the magical world, Surrender is about clinging to it. Rees Brennan sets the mood right from the first line: “Magic was like a special guest in Sin’s life. It appeared all too rarely, stayed for a brief interval, and she spent the rest of her time preparing for it to come again.”
Sin’s persistent determination to see Mae as a friend, despite their new status as rivals makes me all the more furious at Merris for setting them against each other. That is not the way to build a strong, cohesive team, woman! And both Mae and Sin can see that, but neither can bring themselves to give way and let the other lead the Market. In Covenant, we saw Mae’s deep love for the Market, and a near infatuation with the magical world she was experiencing, not to mention her awe of Sin. In Surrender, we see Mae through Sin’s eyes as a usurper, and an invader.
Under Sin’s more jaded eye, the dark side of the Market bubbles up to the surface. The hatred and fear of anybody with a real magical inheritance, and the willingness of Marketfolk to exploit as well as help are all picked apart and held up to the readers. The Market’s fear of anybody born with magic, to the point where they are willing to hand a seven-year-old over to a magicians’ Circle, or exile her whole family if they refuse is a self-fulfilling prophecy. All strongly magical people will become magicians, feeding people to demons, they think, so they won’t allow them any possibility of becoming anything else.
Rees Brennan likes to poke at what it means to be human, and in this installment she does it both through Nick’s continuing struggle with human emotions, and also through the human ability to lie and put on a performance. In Covenant, Nick convinced Mae to help him ape human emotions, to put on a performance of humanity for Alan, but it’s Alan and Sin in Surrender who perform, changing roles at will. Alan, for whom dishonesty is a defining character trait, drives Nick, with his demonic honesty and longing for plain speaking up walls. In a reversal of the standard exchange between a human and a magical creature, Nick demands: “Why do you always lie?” to which Alan replies, “It’s in my nature.” To Nick, even though he has lived with humans his whole life, it’s Alan and Sin who are mysterious and frustrating creatures, and Alan is well aware of this. However, as Mae points out, although Nick doesn’t, cannot lie, he is capable of self-deception, projecting his own feelings onto Alan where he doesn’t have to acknowledge them. Sin herself becomes more human to the reader as we see behind her performances as well, and as Alan and Sin struggle to see each other for what they really are.
Like Alan, Sin has had to act as a parent to her sister and brother since the death of her mother. Like Alan, Sin bears a terrible weight of responsibility. I never really understood the idea that opposites are supposed to attract, except from the writerly standpoint of it being an easy way to get lots of conflict into a romance. All of the happy, healthy couples I’ve met have had something huge in common that makes it easier to bridge the gap between them. In this case, they can each understand what the other is going through, and they’re willing to help each other. It’s this similarity and basis for understanding which let me be sold on Sin and Alan as a couple, which was a hard sell, because I have been secretly wishing I could have Mae with Sin instead.
Possession as a theme runs through Surrender and the other books in the trilogy, and not just the kind with demons, though there’s plenty of that with Nick walking around. Possession and possessiveness of people in multiple incarnations affects every character. In Lexicon, Alan let Nick go, and Nick came back. Covenant, Nick showed the lengths he would go to to make Alan happy, and what he would agree to in order to keep Alan with him. In Surrender, the magicians have their mark on Alan, to get Nick to do what they want. Nick’s possessive, unhealthy attachment to Alan is the first sign that he can actually love. Even if he doesn’t know what the feeling is, even if he can’t express or comprehend it, he’s feeling it, and it terrifies him. Meanwhile, Anzu calls Alan, Mae, and Jamie (but especially Alan) Nick’s pets. He sees them as toys he can steal. In Covenant, Mae asked Nick to mark her to keep Anzu away, but now she’s having second thoughts. She wants the Aventerine Circle’s pearl so that she can make up her own mind about Nick without his power bleeding over. Jamie too takes Nick’s mark, leaving open whether a friendship can exist when one party has that much control over another. Lastly, Sin, with her fierce insistence that her siblings are hers, in the same way they would be if they were her son and daughter, hers to protect, hers to take care of, that leads her to leave the Market, her home. In the end, they’re hers, but she’s theirs too.
Sin is a lot less quippy than Nick or Mae, which did make it harder for me to find snappy quotes for the title and cut text, but also fit her character, and her seriousness. Rees Brennan had to restrain herself to dialogue with the previously established wits and Mae’s many shirts (and Alan’s one shirt). There was so much to find out about Sin, so much left undiscovered from thr first two books, much of which would have made wit utterly out of place. And Rees Brennan pulled off this style of writing spectacularly. I had been a little less than enthused about the choice of Sin as narrator (and kind of wished Jamie was going to be, it would have been a lot of fun) but having read Surrender, I see why Rees Brennan made the choice she did. Given how much each of the other characters knew, and what they were scheming, using a relative outsider to the original team of schemers allowed her to control the flow of information to the reader. Also, it created tension and just a little heartache. As Rees Brennan brings Sin to life, she makes it hard to root for either Sin or Mae for the leadership of the Market, because one of them has to lose. I didn’t want either girl to lose. Besides, I liked getting to know Sin better.
In my review for Covenant, I mentioned that Rees Brennan used the same structure for Lexicon and Covenant was almost identical, Perspective character gets into trouble, the four main characters get together, they go to a Goblin Market, there’s a small reveal, and then a much larger one at the beginning of the finale. Because of Sin being the main character, there were some adjustments to this, with Sin’s leaving of the Goblin Market replacing going to one, and Sin of course being a fith main character. Besides that, the structure again was very similar, giving the series a satisfying rhythm that makes them hang together. Rees Brennan’s idea of a small reveal this time though made me put aside the book for several long minutes before I could even think about going on. Beware, she doesn’t pull any punches.
As ever, there were things I disliked. The constant open emphasis on performances and playing a part could be a bit grating. The text hits the reader over the head with it in a way that made me just want to groan, “Yeah, alright already, I get it, this is important! If I was reading this for Literature class, and I was asked to identify the theme, here it is, performance. Thanks.” I could have done with a little more subtlety.
On the other hand, sometimes there’s too much subtlety. Rees Brennan hints and hints around Sin’s feelings about Merris and her sudden favoring of Mae, and I would have liked to have seen it explored just a little bit. Merris did after all help take care of Sin and her siblings, and was implied to have been a mother figure that Sin looked up to and desperately wanted to please before this all happened. It’s a major motivating force for Sin, and besides, Merris just seems eager to rip her heart out now that she can’t lie. (“If I’d had a daughter, I would have wanted her to be like you...But just a little better,” Really, Merris, Really?) Rees Brennan’s characterization here is particularly deft, as this cruelty is always shown as explicitly Merris’s, not a reflection of what all humans are under the lies. Still, it’s a topic I think should have been addressed more thoroughly. Also, I would have liked to have seen some more mention of just what kind of breathtaking bravery it took for Sin to dance alone after having seen her mother fall to the demons. And I kind of wanted to meet the demons the magicians are talking to in the background in one scene. We only ever meet Nick, Liannan, and Anzu again.
I probably should warn that Surrender, as I said above has that deeply unhealthy (but sweet) brotherly bond, as well as possession in all of it’s horrific glory in spades. And Nick’s descriptions of possession from the other side are... disturbing.
None of this changes the fact that I love this book, by the way.
The last book in the trilogy is out, which means there will be no more novel snippets from said series or short stories set in the same universe showing up on Rees Brennan’s livejournal. It’s all over. You have no idea how much this grieves me. She called the ones she published between the release of Covenant and Surrender “Surrender Cookies”, which always makes me think that there are these cookies that you eat, and suddenly, *swoon* you feel compelled to throw down your weapons and accept this new guy who insists he’s ruling your country now.
Her livejournal, where you definitely should go, Dear Readers, at least to read the cookies, is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sarahtales.
With Merris, the leader of the Goblin Market’s proclamation, and Nick showing up as a student at her school, Sin’s life has not been going as well as she hoped. The Aventurine Circle, magicians who feed people to demons for their power are on the move with her friend and rival’s brother among their ranks, and she can’t get rid of the Ryves brothers, to whom she owes a debt that can never be repaid. She must stop the circle and figure out what to do with the brothers if she hopes to keep the Market and its people safe and take her place as their leader.
You have to understand, Readers, these books are the kind of books that you have to keep reading. They’re forget to eat, forget to take the dogs out, don’t look at me like that, sleeping isn’t all that important really books. They’re those kinds of books on their second, third, thirtieth, three hundredth reading. They’re good books. The dialogue is crisp and witty, the characters are larger than life, and the plot barrels along, dragging you with it. Every time I read one, I am overcome with the need to praise them, something I try to get out of the way here, at the beginning of the review, so I can spend the rest of the review trying to express just why I love them so much.
Also, I should probably warn you, I have not been able to figure out how to say what I want to say about Surrender without massive spoilers for Lexicon and Covenant. Comments, by the way, are not a Surrender spoiler free zone. Sorry.
As with Covenant, Surrender has to do without the gothic suspense that characterizes Lexicon, but if Covenant is about discovering and reveling in the magical world, Surrender is about clinging to it. Rees Brennan sets the mood right from the first line: “Magic was like a special guest in Sin’s life. It appeared all too rarely, stayed for a brief interval, and she spent the rest of her time preparing for it to come again.”
Sin’s persistent determination to see Mae as a friend, despite their new status as rivals makes me all the more furious at Merris for setting them against each other. That is not the way to build a strong, cohesive team, woman! And both Mae and Sin can see that, but neither can bring themselves to give way and let the other lead the Market. In Covenant, we saw Mae’s deep love for the Market, and a near infatuation with the magical world she was experiencing, not to mention her awe of Sin. In Surrender, we see Mae through Sin’s eyes as a usurper, and an invader.
Under Sin’s more jaded eye, the dark side of the Market bubbles up to the surface. The hatred and fear of anybody with a real magical inheritance, and the willingness of Marketfolk to exploit as well as help are all picked apart and held up to the readers. The Market’s fear of anybody born with magic, to the point where they are willing to hand a seven-year-old over to a magicians’ Circle, or exile her whole family if they refuse is a self-fulfilling prophecy. All strongly magical people will become magicians, feeding people to demons, they think, so they won’t allow them any possibility of becoming anything else.
Rees Brennan likes to poke at what it means to be human, and in this installment she does it both through Nick’s continuing struggle with human emotions, and also through the human ability to lie and put on a performance. In Covenant, Nick convinced Mae to help him ape human emotions, to put on a performance of humanity for Alan, but it’s Alan and Sin in Surrender who perform, changing roles at will. Alan, for whom dishonesty is a defining character trait, drives Nick, with his demonic honesty and longing for plain speaking up walls. In a reversal of the standard exchange between a human and a magical creature, Nick demands: “Why do you always lie?” to which Alan replies, “It’s in my nature.” To Nick, even though he has lived with humans his whole life, it’s Alan and Sin who are mysterious and frustrating creatures, and Alan is well aware of this. However, as Mae points out, although Nick doesn’t, cannot lie, he is capable of self-deception, projecting his own feelings onto Alan where he doesn’t have to acknowledge them. Sin herself becomes more human to the reader as we see behind her performances as well, and as Alan and Sin struggle to see each other for what they really are.
Like Alan, Sin has had to act as a parent to her sister and brother since the death of her mother. Like Alan, Sin bears a terrible weight of responsibility. I never really understood the idea that opposites are supposed to attract, except from the writerly standpoint of it being an easy way to get lots of conflict into a romance. All of the happy, healthy couples I’ve met have had something huge in common that makes it easier to bridge the gap between them. In this case, they can each understand what the other is going through, and they’re willing to help each other. It’s this similarity and basis for understanding which let me be sold on Sin and Alan as a couple, which was a hard sell, because I have been secretly wishing I could have Mae with Sin instead.
Possession as a theme runs through Surrender and the other books in the trilogy, and not just the kind with demons, though there’s plenty of that with Nick walking around. Possession and possessiveness of people in multiple incarnations affects every character. In Lexicon, Alan let Nick go, and Nick came back. Covenant, Nick showed the lengths he would go to to make Alan happy, and what he would agree to in order to keep Alan with him. In Surrender, the magicians have their mark on Alan, to get Nick to do what they want. Nick’s possessive, unhealthy attachment to Alan is the first sign that he can actually love. Even if he doesn’t know what the feeling is, even if he can’t express or comprehend it, he’s feeling it, and it terrifies him. Meanwhile, Anzu calls Alan, Mae, and Jamie (but especially Alan) Nick’s pets. He sees them as toys he can steal. In Covenant, Mae asked Nick to mark her to keep Anzu away, but now she’s having second thoughts. She wants the Aventerine Circle’s pearl so that she can make up her own mind about Nick without his power bleeding over. Jamie too takes Nick’s mark, leaving open whether a friendship can exist when one party has that much control over another. Lastly, Sin, with her fierce insistence that her siblings are hers, in the same way they would be if they were her son and daughter, hers to protect, hers to take care of, that leads her to leave the Market, her home. In the end, they’re hers, but she’s theirs too.
Sin is a lot less quippy than Nick or Mae, which did make it harder for me to find snappy quotes for the title and cut text, but also fit her character, and her seriousness. Rees Brennan had to restrain herself to dialogue with the previously established wits and Mae’s many shirts (and Alan’s one shirt). There was so much to find out about Sin, so much left undiscovered from thr first two books, much of which would have made wit utterly out of place. And Rees Brennan pulled off this style of writing spectacularly. I had been a little less than enthused about the choice of Sin as narrator (and kind of wished Jamie was going to be, it would have been a lot of fun) but having read Surrender, I see why Rees Brennan made the choice she did. Given how much each of the other characters knew, and what they were scheming, using a relative outsider to the original team of schemers allowed her to control the flow of information to the reader. Also, it created tension and just a little heartache. As Rees Brennan brings Sin to life, she makes it hard to root for either Sin or Mae for the leadership of the Market, because one of them has to lose. I didn’t want either girl to lose. Besides, I liked getting to know Sin better.
In my review for Covenant, I mentioned that Rees Brennan used the same structure for Lexicon and Covenant was almost identical, Perspective character gets into trouble, the four main characters get together, they go to a Goblin Market, there’s a small reveal, and then a much larger one at the beginning of the finale. Because of Sin being the main character, there were some adjustments to this, with Sin’s leaving of the Goblin Market replacing going to one, and Sin of course being a fith main character. Besides that, the structure again was very similar, giving the series a satisfying rhythm that makes them hang together. Rees Brennan’s idea of a small reveal this time though made me put aside the book for several long minutes before I could even think about going on. Beware, she doesn’t pull any punches.
As ever, there were things I disliked. The constant open emphasis on performances and playing a part could be a bit grating. The text hits the reader over the head with it in a way that made me just want to groan, “Yeah, alright already, I get it, this is important! If I was reading this for Literature class, and I was asked to identify the theme, here it is, performance. Thanks.” I could have done with a little more subtlety.
On the other hand, sometimes there’s too much subtlety. Rees Brennan hints and hints around Sin’s feelings about Merris and her sudden favoring of Mae, and I would have liked to have seen it explored just a little bit. Merris did after all help take care of Sin and her siblings, and was implied to have been a mother figure that Sin looked up to and desperately wanted to please before this all happened. It’s a major motivating force for Sin, and besides, Merris just seems eager to rip her heart out now that she can’t lie. (“If I’d had a daughter, I would have wanted her to be like you...But just a little better,” Really, Merris, Really?) Rees Brennan’s characterization here is particularly deft, as this cruelty is always shown as explicitly Merris’s, not a reflection of what all humans are under the lies. Still, it’s a topic I think should have been addressed more thoroughly. Also, I would have liked to have seen some more mention of just what kind of breathtaking bravery it took for Sin to dance alone after having seen her mother fall to the demons. And I kind of wanted to meet the demons the magicians are talking to in the background in one scene. We only ever meet Nick, Liannan, and Anzu again.
I probably should warn that Surrender, as I said above has that deeply unhealthy (but sweet) brotherly bond, as well as possession in all of it’s horrific glory in spades. And Nick’s descriptions of possession from the other side are... disturbing.
None of this changes the fact that I love this book, by the way.
The last book in the trilogy is out, which means there will be no more novel snippets from said series or short stories set in the same universe showing up on Rees Brennan’s livejournal. It’s all over. You have no idea how much this grieves me. She called the ones she published between the release of Covenant and Surrender “Surrender Cookies”, which always makes me think that there are these cookies that you eat, and suddenly, *swoon* you feel compelled to throw down your weapons and accept this new guy who insists he’s ruling your country now.
Her livejournal, where you definitely should go, Dear Readers, at least to read the cookies, is
sarahtales.
