Why did I read this? Why?!?

I knew that the author was Internet Famous before being published. I knew she was part of Cassandra Cla(i)re's writing circle - in fact, both CC and Holly Black have blurbs on the back. I knew that the entire premise sounded like a Supernatural ripoff. And yet, I ignored all my better instincts and checked the damn thing out of the library.

I must be a masochist.

The Demon's Lexicon revolves around two brothers, Sam and Dean - sorry, Nick and Alan. Their father has been killed by demons, and their mother has lost her mind, so at the beginning of the story, they're on their own except for each other. Right off the bat, I noticed that the prose was . . . iffy. Bickering and dropping exposition in the middle of a demon attack iffy. Not to mention lines like this:

"Don't hurt her!" yelped a boy's voice.

This sentence is awful - not because of the words used, but because of the way they're arranged. You do not use passive tense when describing a person's voice, especially not if that voice is saying something like "Don't hurt her." Your characters should at least be in charge of their own voices.

So the speaker is revealed to be a wibbling boy by the name of Jamie Crawford, who speaks entirely in Python-esque wisecracks- not the best trait to assign to a character who's supposed to be terrified for his life. As Dan noted in his City of Bones review, the reader won't believe that the character is frightened if they're cracking jokes. Jamie came to the brothers along with his sister Mae, who "was the weird girl in the class above [Nick], who dyed her hair pink and always wore a lot of pentagrams and crystals. Right now, she was also wearing chandelier earrings and a violently pink t-shirt that read 'Romeo and Juliet Wouldn't Have Lasted'."

Note to authors: having your characters wear smarmy t-shirts doesn't make them (or you) look smart. It just irritates the reader, who would like to see the plot move along rather than get bogged down with pointless description. This whole paragraph is just an excuse for Nick to muse about how his dad warned him not to draw attention to himself, because "the magicians" would find him if he did. Because magicians look for teenaged posers dripping in jewelery and clothing that scream "Look at me! I'm unique!" apparently.

(I'm on page ten at this point. God help me.)

So the reason that Jamie and his sister have come to Cal and Niko- sorry, Nick and Alan- is because Jamie (who is gay with a capital G, by the way - and I'm talking "wears lavendar shirts and earrings" gay. Between that, the wisecracks, and the fact that's he's always on the verge of wetting himself with terror, I suspect that Ms. Rees-Brennan picked him up at the local Stereotyped Gay Sidekicks warehouse) has been marked by a demon. His mark is a third-tier mark, which means that either he or the magician who put the mark on him has to be sacrificed to a demon. Nick, who is cynical and hard-edged and protective of his family (gee, does that sound familiar to anyone else?) wants Jamie and Mae out of his house before they bring the demons down on him and his brother, but then it is discovered that - gasp! - Alan's been marked as well. Alan, by the way, is sensitive and kind, in direct contrast to his brother, and is this ringing any bells? Nick changes his tune entirely, and wants to track down whoever it is that's responsible for these marks, and kill them. Of course, complications arise, secrets are revealed, and none of Our Heroes die, though Nick does get turned into a demon, becoming the very thing he hunts. I repeat: DOES. THIS. SOUND. FAMILIAR?

There are a lot of things wrong with this book, and I'm not just talking about the blatant unoriginality of it all- though I could probably write an entire separate article about that. Aside from the Nick and Alan/Dean and Sam parallels, you've got demons who turn into plumes of black smoke when exorcised, emotionally absent/dead parents, and a Goblin Market (hi there, Hellboy!). Aside from all the ripoffs, the prose is middling-to-awful ("The pipe gave a long metallic groan, like an ancient robot about to fall to pieces."), the characters display about one personality trait each (Nick is hard-edged; Alan is sympathetic; Mae is tough; Jamie is fey.), the plot is dull, and the overall impression is that of something that's been repeatedly photocopied, losing more and more of the original's appeal each time it was copied. Demons and magicians and talismans and ravens; it's all been done before, and the book has nothing new to offer. Do yourself a favour and pick up some old-school urban fantasy as well; even Neil Gaiman has more to offer than this reheated stew of cliches.