Read this and this

Read this and this.

But I have to argue with Sarah's argument about character A and character B in The Demon's Lexicon. Because one of them is a deeply awesome person in complete control of his environment and the other is a wannabe (nothing wrong with being new to something, but it's intrinsically less awesome than having mastered it) who switches her affections from one person to another person and seems to toy with both of them and hurts at least one, yet somehow without any panache, which might excuse it.

Sarah argues we don't like the second one because she's a girl, but actually it's for the reasons I just stated. So there you go. Except she's ABSOLUTELY RIGHT about everything else in the whole article, especially Harriet Potter. Writers punish and/or undercut awesome girls. It's a fact.

There is also a scene where the other three all mock that character for her admittedly silly outfit and laugh at her and put her down, and she gets embarrassed, which is part of my whole giant ongoing argument that we learn how to see people (and characters) because of how other people treat them. I think that scene right there caused all of the backlash against her. No one else gets mocked or ashamed. Just the girl who's among four boys. I don't think she ever recovered from that.

Which teaches me something about writing, like maybe people can knock down your character but if the character *believes* the badness then we believe it too. I sort of wonder whether if our girl had come out of that scene being mighty instead of abashed, we'd have been on her side.

Sarah is allowed to be a little myopic about her own characters, though. It's impossible to be objective!

You've bought the book now, right? Because hello, BUY THE BOOK! The Demon's Lexicon! So very very good! It's so good I got all Holden Caulfield calling authors up and emailed Sarah to say "YER SO AWESOME!!!" then turned bright red and ran away.

I think I've read it six or seven times already. That book is brilliant. Brilliant!