Book Review Senior Exam

            The book I read for my book 3 is Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins. This is the second book in the Hex Hall trilogy. It’s a demon heroine fantasy series. It has a lot of battles, romance, and even betrayal. Demonglass is a mix of different genres in that it is speculative fiction and the sub-genre for that is fantasy, but it also has realistic elements such as the setting which takes place in London, England and other parts of the United Kingdom. It has many elements of other genres besides fantasy that it is like a fruit salad.
The Eye is an organization that wants to wipe out all of Prodigium because they believe that Prodigium are unholy and abominations of the angels that defied God. The attack destroyed council headquarters and now the council is at Thorne Abbey which is where Sophie’s great-grandmother, Alice was turned into a demon. Thorne Abbey is the birth place of Sophie’s powers.

            The language that is used in the book is so very colloquial that even a sixth-grader could understand the book even with its mature contents and some old English language used by Sophie’s father, James Atherton. He talks as if he were still living Victorian England when he says “curiouser and curiouser” (Hawkins 209). His use of Victorian English is to help the book have a connection to its setting, London since he grew up in England and of course has the British accent and upbringing and not to mention he is a few hundred years old. This is when Sophie and James are looking at the Grimoire in James’ office. They are trying to learn about the possession ritual that someone has been using to turn teenage Prodigium into Demons. They learn that the possession ritual is actually missing from the Grimoire. No one else knows they have the Grimoire because James put a glamour on the book case that held the dark and evil book.

            The book Demonglass has a very strong and engaging plot that keeps you on edge and makes your keep wondering what will happen next! The plot is basically summarized in this one quote that Sophie says, “…by the end of the last semester, I’d watched my great-grandmother kill my best frenemy, and the boy I loved had pulled a knife on me” (Hawkins 2). This basically summarizes the first book in the Hex Hall trilogy, Hex Hall. The second book which is also what I read for my book three, Demonglass is also pretty much the same plot, but with a new twist of who really is evil and who isn’t. Can Sophie and her friends find the demon raising culprit in time or will they be too late and a demon army will rise? That is the question for the second book in the Hex Hall Series, Demon Glass. Sophie meets many new people such as the Prodigium Council. She learns of how the Council is now at Thorne Abbey due to an attack on them from L'Ochio de dio or The Eye for short.

            The novel, Demonglass, has much more strengths than weaknesses. Some strengths the novel has are it’s very engaging plot that keeps the reader on edge with its plot twists and mythical nature, the colloquial language used in the book, and relatable situations that Sophie is put through as deciding about what to do about friends and family which are all problems that teenagers face today. Demonglass has one weakness, it can get slow at times and very fast at times, and it does not have a constant pace.

            Demonglass is such a well written novel that it deserves 5 stars! It is one of the best books that I have ever read and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes demons, witches, and warlocks. It could one day become a classical like Shakespeare in the near future. Well Done Rachel, well done!