bookgazing | Devil's Kiss

At the beginning of ‘Devil’s Kiss’ Billi SanGreal is about to face her final Ordeal; a test to prove that she is worthy of joining the Knights Templar. The dwindling group of London based knights are tasked with defending the world against the unholy demons that stalk humanity, so Billi needs to be tough. She’s been preparing for this test since she was very young. Still, she never expected to be asked to kill a child. There’s no way she’s ready for that.

I know, I KNOW! How is that for dramatic tension in the opening chapter? I am an emotionally, bloodthirsty fantasy reader so when I saw that bit of the blurb, my chain of thought went like this: extreme innocence vs the sword - potential for huge guilt, despite making the right choice – Buffy angst – damn it where is my credit card? There was never a thought for the poor child about to get the chop.

There are quite a few things in ‘Devil’s Kiss’ that could be considered plot twists, including revealing why Billi’s Ordeal involves killing a child. While I think the twists are fairly obvious when you’re reading the book, I do think not knowing how the story progresses makes it more fun to read, so I’ll try to avoid talking about plot specifics. Instead I’m going to focus on the wonderful, conflicted warrior heroine that is Bilquis SanGreal (to give her full Muslim name - Billi’s mum was from Pakistan and Billi is a mixed race heroine). I’m afraid this post may gush a little as warrior women are one of my favourite character groups.

Like a lot of teen protagonists engaged in an ongoing battle with evil, Billi SanGreal’s daily life is not exactly all fun and frolics. She has no friends and everyone thinks her father is abusing her, because she is always covered in bruises from Templar training. Billi’s father is the revered Master of the Knights Templar. He has dedicated his life to God’s service and sworn to protect humanity. He is also a total bastard. Rumour has it, the devil is afraid of Arthur SanGreal. Everyone at Billi’s school thinks he killed Billi’s mother, although Billi knows she was killed by ghulls (vampires). Arthur has never shown any tenderness towards Billi and although she trains to become a Templar in the hope that he will be proud of her he never gives her any positive recognition. It’s not surprising that Billi often hates her dad and longs for a normal life away from the Templars.

There was a point during ‘Devil’s Kiss’ where I despaired of Sarwat Chadda’s handling of Billi. It seemed like she was going to be one of those heroines who is highly trained and physically strong, who never gets a chance to fight. She kept getting into vulnerable situations because she listened to her emotions during battles, when victory would have come from just slashing and killing. There’s a reasonably major plot point that boils down to Billi accidentally helping an evil person because she wants a normal teenage romance. Cue me sighing and rolling my eyes, because I want my kickass heroines to kill people, not have their authors stop them from making with the stabby stabby! I also thought Chadda was showing that girls could not be effective defenders against evil because of their emotions make them susceptible to being tricked, or losing fights. All the people fighting without letting their emotions decrease their effectiveness were male and Billi was the only one openly wrestling with emotional problems. This seemed like a suspiciously gender biased approach to the fight against evil.

Then I had an epiphany –what initially seems like Billi’s weakness, is actually a rock solid form of emotional strength, as impressive as her physical abilities.

No, no hear me out. I know it sounds apologist and maybe you don’t trust my taste in heroines after my defence of Bella , but I think I might be on to something. Billi grows up with a father who is harsh and discourages emotion. Arthur tries to dissuade her from making any positive emotional connections and trust me the extent of his strategy for keeping Billi from forming these kind of attachments will blow your mind. When her best friend Kay reappears in her life, after avoiding contact with her for a year he feels something for her, but essentially rejects her and refuses to take their relationship any further because basically (let’s say it all together) THE FIGHT AGAINST EVIL MUST BE UNCOMPLICATED BY PESKY EMOTIONS. She grows up isolated from her peers, surrounded by the idea that any attempt to connect will end in rejection and is taught throughout ‘Devil’s Kiss’ that feelings brings danger, yet she still feels. She’s still capable of feeling natural human compassion when she is asked to kill a child. She still attempts to find some way to care about her father, despite his lack of affection. She tries to form romantic connections, not because she’s desperate, or incomplete without a boyfriend, but because she wants to be a human being with feelings. She’s bloody well going to defy the orders of the Templar master to function like a normal person. Feeling is her own form of hard-headed rebellion and that makes me love her oh so much.

Now trying to remain a fully feeling person does place Billi in some tough situations, because evil takes advantage of emotional feeling. Her openness makes her vulnerable to being tricked, or disarmed in battle. There are quite a few scenes where Billi does something that hurts her fight against evil, which she could have avoided by being harder emotionally. These parts of the book can seem a bit silly to readers who are detached from the text and can see evil coming a mile off, but they correspond with the logic of the character Chadda has created.

While Billi is in touch with her feelings she’s still capable of making hard choices which require her to go against every emotional tie she’s made. Sarwat Chadda sets her some very hard, but necessary decisions in ‘Devil’s Kiss’ and it is heartbreaking to watch Billi realise what she has to sacrifice to combat evil. When Billi takes action it is always a choice that she wrestles with, even though readers can see what she should choose for the good of the world. This act of choosing between feeling and duty sustains narrative tension and shows that Chadda’s decision to keep Billi emotionally susceptible is important for creating conflict, which adds to the reader’s enjoyment. Having a heroine who is always looking for another option, who is always wondering if the hardest choice has to be the best choice just because it’s hard and who can cry after she makes the hard choices that do have to be made because it was fucking hard for her to choose the world over herself and those she loves, is much more interesting than having a robotic killer for a heroine. Obviously I also wanted Billi to have some uncomplicated fight scenes where her their training comes to the fore and she wins, because she’s a great fighter. Billi gets that, which made me happy.

I just had a few problems with the book. The dialogue is sometimes uninspired and predictable. Although the general plot furthering dialogue is fine, when a powerful sentence is required to knock readers in the head the book often provides a clichéd line that’s been overused by other writers. It’s often much more fun to hear the third person narrator describe Billi’s thoughts, than to hear people vocalise things. The simplicity of the dialogue makes the explanations of religious stories simple to understand and provides strong moments of genuinely emotional speech. However, sometimes the conventional lines of dialogue can be a bit of a distraction.

When Ari tweeted about the book (thank you Ari for getting me to pick this up) she mentioned some pacing problems and things do tend to happen a little abruptly. Although, this has a positive side, as it means readers don’t have to spend too many chapters suspending disbelief when the characters don’t catch on quite as quickly as readers do. I would say that the internal pacing of individual episodes feels fine, the problems are more with the pacing and connection of some of these episodes to make up the overall plot arc. The fight scenes progress at a good speed and feel sequentially coherent. Conversations don’t feel like they go on for too long, or are too short. It’s just that sometimes people appear, or secrets are revealed in a rather hasty way that makes it feel like Chadda is forcing the plot along unnaturally. For me this was a point that only bothered me when it was happening, but it’s something to be aware of.

I mentioned above that I think the plot reveals are sometimes quite obvious, but I’m not sure Chadda meant them to be super secret twists of astonishment. He powers through many of the supposedly secretive sections and foreshadows like crazy, then when he does keep back a really big surprise it is so stunningly different from anything else that has been revealed. In fact it’s almost like the other, more obvious reveals are intended to distract you from what you should be looking at. That would be cleeeeeeverrrrr if Chadda meant to do that. Authorial intent is such a slippery beast though.

Let me finish by saying that there’s so much more I could write about ‘Devil’s Kiss’. It makes a smashing addition to the warrior girl, paranormal sub-genre, with kick ass battles, creeptastic demons and major emotional conflict. The sequel ‘Dark Goddess’ is already in my book pile, because I have no spending restraint.

As a bonus I think I’ll be hosting a rare author interview with Sarwat Chadda here at Bookgazing, because I have ravenous questions to assail him with. He is very nice and politely ignored my typing mistake when I asked if he would like to talk here.

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Devil's Kiss - Sarwat Chadda