Plurk paste

The information on this particular series online is, at best, lacking; so I will attempt to fill the gaps (big huge gaps) myself. Mae is the product of a disinterested family. To her mind, her parents never really had the time to care much for her or for her brother, as they were more interested in their jobs and country clubs. When her parents got divorced, family life became colder, emptier, despite not being any less fancy. From a young age, she learned that in this world there was 'Jamie and her' and everybody else, and usually both sides were in disagreement with each other. To fill the silence, they became loud and silly and developed their own brother-sister coping-mechanisms (the inside jokes, the trust, the would-do-anything-for-you train of thought).

And all this went on and worked very well for them, up until Jamie unconsciously slept with the devil - demon, in this case - and their lives took a turn for the odd and dangerous, and then just the dangerous. Jamie's slip got him a demon mark, and the Crawford siblings recur to the cheerful help of the Ryves brothers. Of course this all gets more messed up when Alan, with all his good intentions, hands her his talisman and ends up getting bitten as well, which leads both pairs of siblings to join forces and get the problem fixed. All this ends up requiring a visit to the goblin market - which Mae falls instantly in love with - another sacrifice from Alan's side, adventure and action and driving around, a visit to the worst place in the history of ever, and a confrontation against the Obsidian Circle, at which point Mae kills a magician in order to get rid of Jamie's mark. It culminates with startling discoveries about the Ryves brothers, and then there is silence.

Up until they meet again, as she notices that her brother might be in trouble again, after having seen him hanging around the old members of the Obsidian Circle, and asks the Ryves brothers for help. Here begins a tug of war between the magician circles of England and herself over her own brother - a meeting of both brain and brawn (this is Nick), that brings on more adventure, betrayal, and mystery and so on. In the middle of all this, there's her lessons in humanity to Nick, and her slow realization that Alan intends to strike a deal with the magicians in order to strip him of all his powers. Mae reacts badly to being lied to and betrayal, and in her growing fondness of Nick, she ends up trying to do the impossible.

She tries to fix everything herself. Both to destroy all the magician circles that threaten the safety of her brother, and to somehow help Nick out beyond reading to him. In the process, she makes her own mistakes, and dances for some dangerous demons, and makes far too many assumptions; but when excrements hit the fan, Mae snaps into action well enough. Well enough to organize a revolt with the people of the Market, with Sin on her side, against the magicians on the day of the deal. On the same day, she is faced with the new knowledge of the fact that her mother, despite all previous signs, does in fact care about her and her brother a lot, just sucks at showing it.

But everything comes with a cost in this world. Mae's attempt to save the market, save her brother, <s>save the cheerleader and save the world</s> and fix everything, comes at the cost of a heavy and gruesome battle. Alan topples her beliefs that he will betray Nick with a completely different twist, and in doing so, ends up betraying her by having lied to and used her. And the knowledge of her mother's affection for them comes at the price of losing her mother in the same battle she helped organize. To top it off, after the battle ends, she loses Jamie, who decides to go to London with the magicians in order to pass them information in secret, and faces the imminent war, and is put in direct competition with Sin for inheriting the Goblin Market.

So yes, all ends in almost tears, except that Mae decides to be strong enough to face this at her best, for the well-being of all of them. And the rest is, as they say, something that'll be in the next book.