The Warded Man, by Peter V. Brett

I'd read good things about this book by Peter Brett, called The Warded Man, and thought I'd give it a go. I pulled the trigger on an eBook version for my Kindle App, and started in. It hooked me from the get-go, and I pretty much gobbled it up.

The main character is named Arlen, and you see him first as a pre-teen, living in a village that has just been attacked. Barbarian hordes? Bandits? Aliens? Nope, attacked by demons. In the world that Brett has created, mankind struggles against demons, which rise at night to kill and destroy anything they can get their claws on. Fire demons, rock demons, air demons, wood demons, water demons... there's a different type of demon for all of the elements of nature. They are kept at bay by certain symbols (called wards) arranged in a certain way as to form a protective circle around a structure or a person. The wards must be perfect, expertly aligned, and kept unmarred, for if one symbol is obscured or damaged, it breaks the circle of magic, and the demons can get in and slay and eat.

Thus, people rule the day and walk freely, but demons rule the night, from dusk to dawn (sunlight kills them). People hunker down and tremble the night away in their protected homes, hoping that their ward nets will hold up to the relentless pounding and testing that the demons unleash upon the shields. The wards are all defensive in nature -- the knowledge of offensive wards, which could enable people to fashion weapons that would actually kill demons, has long since been lost, as a result of complacency on the part of mankind, who thought they'd defeated the demons three millennia earlier, when the beaten demon armies fled, not to be seen again. People thought they'd won the decisive victory, and as the centuries passed, the knowledge of how to beat the demons dissolved. When the demons returned, no one knew how to fight them, but clung to the knowledge of a few remaining defensive wards to keep them from death in the night.

Wow, that's a long set-up, sorry.

So Arlen is the somewhat typical fantasy trope: the farmboy who takes it upon himself to attempt the impossible quest to save the world. In this case, it is trying to learn the long-lost secrets of offensive wards, so demons can be defeated. It is, of course, motivated by revenge, as you can imagine. Demons had killed someone very important to him, and he wanted to make them pay.

The story is very well written, and the world-building is effective. The action continues practically non-stop, and the characters are memorable. The tale is fairly predictable, but in this particular case, it doesn't matter, since the path it takes is where you'd like to see it go (at least it was for me), so it worked.

My main problems with the book were both trivial and more substantial. Of course, I strongly disliked what Brett did with the names. He took names we use in our world, and merely tweaked them phonetically, so they sounded the same, but read differently. So Jason became Jasin, Mary became Mery, Sarah became Saira, Doug becameDug, like that. I don't know... maybe that's fine for most readers, and I know you can't please everyone, but it just annoyed me.

The larger concern for me was the final quarter of the book (for those that have read the book, I mean from the point where Arlen saves Leesha and Rojer in the forest, onward). It just felt like a step down in storytelling to me. It seemed almost Hollywood-like. I don't know... from that point onward, the three main characters just didn't seem like they were themselves. They said and did things that didn't click with the way they'd been written to that point.

But in spite of the awkward finale, the book was a great read, and I finished it easily. There is a sequel out, calledThe Desert Spear, and I've read reviews of it that were not all flattering -- but honestly, I am intrigued enough to want to read it anyway. So once I tear through a couple more fantasy books that are clamouring for my attention, I'll revisit the war between mankind and demonkind. Demons are good "bad guys" to have (sort of like Nazis).

Summary: 4/5 Fast paced, memorable scenes and characters, good world-building. But the tale falters toward the end (imho), the characters slipped out of character, and the names thing bugged me. But I do recommend it. At least, if you have access to a digital reader of some sort, get a sample of the book from Kindle (for free) and read the intro. Maybe you'll like it. Minimal profanity, but very violent.