Sidekick Showcase [46] - Demon of the Night

Sidekick Showcase, previously known as Sidekick Saturday, is a weekly bookish meme, hosted here by Jaclyn at JC's Book Haven. There are many secondary characters that are as great as the primaries. In some cases, the sidekicks actually steal the show and you like them better than the heroine or hero. Maybe they didn't have enough page time for how great they were. Anyone can play along! I will post my Sidekicks on Saturday, then whichever day during the week that you would like to post yours, you can put your link in on my page. Just do the following:

• Choose a sidekick *or someone other than the hero or heroine* that you would like to put in the spotlight that fits in the week's topic
• Share a picture (if you can) and information about the character
• Give the title and author of a book the character can be found in
• Please don't include too many spoilers when describing why the character is such a great sidekick
• The day of your post, put your link in below and grab the code for your post so you can see the others that post their's throughout the week as well

We are doing creatures of the night Sidekick Showcase themes for this month to celebrate Halloween. So for the whole month the choices should be witches, wizards, vampires, ghosts, ghouls, zombies, monsters, and the like!

For the whole Month of October, we're doing Creatures of the Night.


My choice is Algaliarept better known as 'Big Al'
The Hollows by Kim Harrison

Algaliarept picture created by Jaclyn Canada

When I first met Algaliarept, later dubbed 'Big Al' by Rachel, I admit  that I was terrified. He scared the beejezus out of me. He is a huge example of how Kim is able to evolve characters into completely different people later on in the series. I don't want to spoil too much of the story for anyone that hasn't read it so just know that he's now a huge character that's multi-faceted and I just adore reading about. Not that he doesn't still scare me, because he does!

Al is all about grabbing familiars for demons, that is when he is not being summoned to kill people. In the first book, Rachel winds up with a demon mark from him so she owes him a favor which basically means the reader is welcomed with many more occurrences of him popping up out of no where to collect. He likes to show up as an Englishman wearing a green smoking jacket and glasses to hide his red demon eyes. After drawing him, I apparently really picture him as a Johnny Depp-esque looking demon because that's completely what emerged. 

I'm enjoying him a lot more in the later books, so I hope you've read the stories so you know what I mean :D My favorite nick-name for Rachel is Itchy-Witch and that's the one that Al gave to her.

Undead Pool, book 12, the next one up in The Hollows is coming out in February. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for an ARC because I absolutely love this series and feel like this wait is taking forever. Currently Chapter 1 is up on Kim's site - http://www.kimharrison.net/BookPages/TUP/TUP.html#TUPexcerpt and she's doing a read-along right now with book discussions. She's on The Good, The Bad, and The Undead right now. Discussion threads can be found on her blog and on Goodreads. If you get the ebook version of The Good, The Bad, and The Undead, it has Chapter 2 for Undead Pool as a bonus. It's on sell for $1.99 right now!

The Good, the Bad, and the Undead (The Hollows, Book 2) at Amazon

Quotes:

“But a slow, deeply satisfied smile came over him, and his breath quickened. 'So softly it starts,' he whispered. 'Foolishly clever and with an unsurvivable trust. It just saved your miserable life, that questionable show of thought, my itchy-witch.' Al’s smile shifted, becoming lighter. 'And now you will live to possibly regret it.”

---

“No, you just keep crashing my life. Look—" I said, and Al grunted.
"Here it comes," the demon muttered. "Listen. Listen to this, runt. She's going to have a list.”

---

“What are you doing now?” Al questioned, listing heavily as he tucked another one of those bottles under his arm and staggered for the cot half hidden behind a curtain. “Seeing if your circumcision is gone? It is.”

My expression went blank, and Trent hesitated.

He looked at me, and I put a hand to my mouth, face flaming. "Oh. My. God. Trent. I'm sorry."

"Um," Trent said, clearly at a loss.

"Call me tomorrow," Al said seriously, "I've got a curse that will take care of that. Unless you like the snake in a turtleneck look.”

---

“Rachel, Rachel, Rachel,” he said, very still and unmoving. “Always jumping to the wrong conclusion. You’re like a frog, you know.”

---

“In a few hours, I’m going to be banished to the surface, my belongings raffled off as novelty items and my living space given to someone else—my reputation destroyed. I’d rather have your head than your soul at this point in my illustrious career.”

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