Peter V. Brett

The Demon Trilogy — (2009) The Warded Man is also published as The Painted Man outside the US. Publisher: The time has come to stand against the night. As darkness falls each night, the corelings rise–demons who well up from the ground like hellish steam, taking on fearsome form and substance. Sand demons. Wood demons. Wind demons. Flame demons. And gigantic rock demons, the deadliest of all. They possess supernatural strength and powers and burn with a consuming hatred of humanity. For hundreds of years the demons have terrorized the night, slowly culling the human herd that shelters behind magical wards–symbols of power whose origins are lost in myth and mystery, and whose protection is terrifyingly fragile. It was not always this way. Once, men and women battled the corelings on equal terms. Once, under the leadership of the legendary Deliverer, and armed with powerful wards that were not merely shields but weapons, they took the battle to the demons... and stopped their advance. But those days are gone. The fighting wards are lost. Night by night the demons grow stronger, while human numbers dwindle under their relentless assault. Now, with hope for the future fading, three young survivors of vicious demon attacks will dare the impossible, stepping beyond the crumbling safety of the wards to risk everything in a desperate quest to regain the secrets of the past. Arlen will pay any price, embrace any sacrifice, for freedom. His grim journey will take him beyond the bounds of human power. Crippled by the demons that killed his parents, Rojer seeks solace in music–only to discover that music can be a weapon as well as a refuge. Beautiful Leesha, who has suffered at the hands of men as well as demons, becomes an expert healer. But what cures can also harm... Together, they will stand against thenight.

Forthcoming: book 3

Related stories:

The Great Bazaar and Other Stories — (2010) Publisher: Humanity has been brought to the brink of extinction. Each night, the world is overrun by demons — bloodthirsty creatures of nightmare that have been hunting and killing humanity for over 300 years. A scant few hamlets and half-starved city-states are all that remain of a once proud civilization, and it is only by hiding behind wards, ancient symbols with the power to repel the demons, that they survive. A handful of Messengers brave the night to keep the lines of communication open between the increasingly isolated populace. But there was a time when the demons were not so bold. A time when wards did more than hold the demons at bay. They allowed man to fight back, and to win. Messenger Arlen Bales will search anywhere, dare anything, to return this magic to the world. Abban, a merchant in the Great Bazaar of Krasia, purports to sell everything a man’s heart could desire, including, perhaps, the key to Arlen’s quest. In addition to the title novelette, The Great Bazaar and Other Stories contains a number of scenes not included in The Painted Man (published in the US as The Warded Man) as well as a glossary and a grimoire, making it an essential guide to one of the most exciting epic fantasy series currently being published.

The Warded Man

Peter V. Brett’s The Warded Man, published in the UK as The Painted Man, is the best fantasy debut I’ve read since Patrick Rothfuss’s. This book had me reading well into the night, and it is, to use a very hackneyed phrase, a real page-turner.

The Warded Man grabbed me right from the start. The plot is loaded with action and balanced by plenty of character development, but it’s relatively straightforward, and I found this a refreshing change from the sweeping, complex epics that I normally read. Also, Brett employs a nice twist or two that you don’t expect. The prose is strong and shows talent, and the dialogue is perfectly suited to the setting.

The Warded Man is set in a world where humans can only go outside in daylight. When the sun goes down, demons rise from a mysterious netherworld called the Core. (We know little about this Core, though there is some interesting foreshadowing toward the end of the book.) Nothing can stop demons but written, painted, or carved wards placed on houses, barns, sheds, fences, set into the walls of a city, or placed on poles in farmers’ fields.

These wards have kept human civilization from total collapse, but the nightly demon attacks prevent civilization from advancing. Their religion teaches that human society was strong and scientifically advanced until they forgot about the First Demon War and committed the sin of pride, believing only in themselves. When the demons returned, they virtually wiped out humanity before the defensive wards were rediscovered and put into use. The ancient attack wards, however, have not been rediscovered, so the demons can only be held at bay, not defeated.

There are three coming-of-age stories in the first half of the book and personal responsibility and dealing with the demons in one’s own heart are major themes in each character’s development. Arlen, a young farm-boy, becomes a warrior-Messenger — those brave souls who travel from town to town with nothing but a portable warded circle to protect them at night. Arlen is obsessed with finding a way to defeat the demons, and that obsession costs him friends, love, and opportunities for a decent life. The orphan boy Rojer Half-grip becomes a jongleur (a bard) whose music entrances demons. And Leesha, a powerless girl, gradually gains power from her knowledge.

If I were Brett’s editor, I would have advised against having all three central characters be so young — it’s just been done so many times that it’s a fantasy cliché — but Brett pulls it off. I look forward to further development of these beautiful but flawed characters in the coming books (there are supposed to be at least three).

Peter Brett touches on the age-old theme of atheism vs. religion, looking at both sides of that debate, and I think he’s got more for us there. There’s also a parallel to the tension between Christianity and Islam, a courageous subject to tackle. I also look forward to learning more about the Core itself, the effect of Arlen’s use of the attack wards, different kinds of demons we did not see in The Warded Man, and the lands beyond the limited range of the people in this story. And I’m hoping for more explanation of the warding system.

Since there’s no geographical context, and the description is sparing, I really wanted a map in this book. The characters refer to maps, but we’re not given one, and that disappointed me.

Peter Brett has made an excellent beginning with The Warded Man, and I eagerly await The Desert Spear.  —Angus   Comments

The Warded Man

I’ve often said that employing the usual fantasy tropes in a novel isn’t an automatic sign of poor writing; it’s what you do with them that matters. Witness the three main characters in Peter Brett’s The Warded Man: a young boy leaving his small hamlet for the larger world, a young girl trying to maintain her independent nature, a young orphan who must make his own way in the world. Anyone seen these before? Anyone? Buehler?

Luckily for us readers, however, Peter Brett does in fact know what to do with them, sharpening the standard character types with a depth of characterization that makes us care about what happens to them, and setting them in an original, often tense, plot.

The world Peter Brett creates is one that once saw an age of magic, followed by an age of science, and, following the fall of science, an age of demons or “corelings.” Long, long ago the corelings (called such because they rise from the core through the ground at night) nearly wiped out humanity, which was saved by The Deliverer and the discovery of magical wards, both offensive and defensive. The offensive wards have long been lost and now humanity (in this part of the world at least) ekes out a rough-hewn existence in a few heavily fortified and warded cities and a host of small hamlets that are linked by brave Messengers who dare the night. People work in this medieval setting by day, then cower in their ward-protected homes at night. Despite the wards, the corelings are often able to pick off handfuls of people and sometimes more, so humanity is gradually declining in numbers.

The Warded Man opens with the aftermath of a successful coreling attack on young Arlen’s hamlet. Subsequent events quickly serve to separate Arlen from his parents and his town as he vows to find a way to fight the corelings, rather than follow the usual cowardly behavior, as exemplified (he believes) by his father. Arlen sets his sights on becoming a Messenger, and along the way he is quasi-adopted by one such Messenger and his wife, learns to be a Warder (one especially talented at painting varied effective wards), meets the love of his young life, travels to nearly all the cities (including the only one whose people do not cower but fight the demons nightly despite taking horrendous losses), and finds a way to battle the demons (the title means you can figure this one out well beforehand).

Meanwhile, Leesha, a young independent woman of another hamlet, starts to learn the ways of healing as a Gatherer, apprenticed first to her local healer, then to another healer in one of the cities. And finally there is Rojer, who after his parents are killed and his hand maimed by corelings, is adopted by a jongleur (an entertainer, some of whom travel with Messengers). Eventually, as one can imagine, the three story lines come together as one.

The world, while generally familiar in fantasy, is fascinating in its details, with its back history of both magic and science, the sharply delineated worlds of safety and danger, the heavily fortified cities surrounded by more dangerous villages. The same is true of the demons, familiar in type (ravening, dangerous, etc.) but more compelling in detail: fire demons, wind demons, sand demons. Even better, the demons become more complex and thus compelling as the story continues, leaving the more simplistic “demons bad, very bad” behind and opening up lots of questions. I can’t say the details are all that thorough: Peter Brett gives us what we need when we need it, and the scene details are often vivid, but I personally wouldn’t have minded even more detail on the demons’ appearance and the wards’ visuals. And of course, my customary “would it kill you to provide a map” gripe.

The characters, while standard type, are mostly sharply drawn, with Leesha the most-so and Rojer the least-so. Rather than give us the standard by-the-numbers coming of age story, Peter Brett does a nice job avoiding that trap and quickening the pace by smoothly jumping months and years at a time, giving us punctuated looks at the characters’ development rather than day-by-day, gradual and predictable movement. We’re given more than enough detail to fill in the blanks ourselves — a method more authors should consider. I also liked how rather than simply give us characters with fully-formed arbitrary personalities, the author shows us (with Leesha and Arlen) young people who are reacting specifically to the people in their lives, with both turning purposely away from the paths exemplified by their parents — Leesha her mom and Arlen his father. I did think there were a few times the characterization slipped in the last quarter of the book, with a few abrupt shifts that could have used a slower evolution and more explanation (I won’t go into detail to save plot points). Side characters vary, with several very sharply drawn vivid creations, such as Leesha’s teacher and the three major adults in Arlen’s life in the city, while others, mostly quite minor save one or two, are more of the fill-in-the-usual-role type characters.

The plot is consistently compelling through nearly all of the book, with good pacing and many tense moments. As with the characterization, I felt the plot weakened a bit around the three-quarter mark, though not for too long. I was more than pleased by the ending.

The ending has both a sense of resolution and a cliffhanger, though the book’s pace and focus on character development clearly tells the reader this is not going to be a single volume story, so nobody should be upset about that cliffhanger. It also opens up some really large questions in terms of plot and theme, rather than just offer up the usual “the hero’s in dire straits” scene, a la Batman TV episodes circa 1967 (for you young’uns, that’s pre-Bale, pre-Clooney, pre-Kilmer, pre-Keaton).

All in all, The Warded Man was a compelling read, one I wanted to finish off in a single reading and one that left me eagerly awaiting the sequel. Highly recommended. —Bill   Comments