Peter V. Brett's The Demon Cycle: The Warded Man & The Desert Spear

Peter V. Brett was a writer I’d been meaning to read, having heard good things about his book series, The Demon Cycle. His first three novels in this series were up for Locus and David Gemmel Legend Awards. 

The series opens with the novel, The Warded Man. The opening of the first novel is inauspicious but carries hints, glimpses of what’s to come. Brett covers the everyday life of villagers in a world mostly trapped in one place—perhaps the distance you could walk in half a day—due to the existence of demons who coalesce after nightfall. The villagers put up wards around their homes, gates, barns, outhouses, etc. to protect themselves against creatures who prowl the night, eager devour the unwary or the lazy maker of wards, until dawn breaks. Arlen is promised to a young girl. His father is coward who won’t fight demons, even if they threaten his family.

This last part is what sets him off a journey to join a messenger—those who get paid to travel across the lands, holding the nations together through communication—and eventually join a guild to learn how to be messenger himself. He shows special talent at warding early on, even quickly sketching wards in the earth with enough power to cut off a rock demon’s arm. It’s supposed to take much training and measuring to do the wards right, but Arlen has an instinctive feel for this.

During his training, he meets another young woman at a library who has special library privileges to help. There’s more to her than she initially appears to have. But it is an ill-fated love that almost leads to marriage. Arlen takes another path.

Meanwhile, Leesha Paper dodges marriage to train to become the village healer and apothecary. She joins forces with Rojer Inn, who was orphaned and crippled by a demon attack when he was a toddler. He has a talent for a stringed instrument that has curious effects on the demons. However, their combined forces don’t completely protect them from other creatures on the road....

The speculative matters fill great steins of wonder joy juice—enough to give the reader a good buzz. Less exciting are the mundane issues, the humdrum. Part of the problem is that the society isn’t fundamentally changed from our historical past, apart from the sketching of wards.

This is corrected by the second novel, The Desert Spear, which mostly follows a fascinating desert society. Also, we find out that each village has, to an extent, formed its own culture, which seems likely given the problems of travel. One speculative question remains. These creatures seem to coalesce in random places. Once solid, they can’t cross wards. They can appear within an enclosed yard but not escape (also in the second book). However, what keeps them from coalescing within the confines of a house? Do they have to ward every floor board? It seems some families are not so energetic at warding, so lazy families seem unlikely to exist in this universe. If the demons were always there, how did the people evolve with them? What did or do the demons feed on, early on especially?

The second novel backs up to tell the coming of age of a desert boy, Ahmann Jardir. In his society, one becomes a warrior against demons, a cleric, or a cofette, the average person who didn’t make it as a warrior. The boys receive a rigorous military training—battling demons trapped in a maze—that weeds out the weak, cowards, the handicapped, and those who didn’t quite make the grade. With a lot nerve, Jardir grows to manhood with a meteoric rise that mirrors Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.

Jardir marries the witch whom everyone fears—even Jardir himself. She guides his every step, every political move every subsequent marriage to get his people ready for a war that will bring them in control of the civilized world and make him the Deliverer, the chosen one who will rid the world of demons as was done in the distant past. However, another “Deliverer” is whispered about, and Jardir plans to kill his rival, the Warded Man who appears toward the end of the first novel.

Meanwhile, Arlen has been learning things about the demons on his own, and has had three potential marriage partners who have been interested in him, but he hasn’t felt that his life would be suitable for marriage. However, he changes his mind.

Earlier, I wrote about “The Curse of the Second Season [or Book, etc.]” in which I describe the gradual breakdown of series narratives, where the first is usually fantastic, the second is pretty good although the flaws appear, and the third is okay but getting tired. The second book in this series is actually an improvement over the first in that it better develops the world and in some ways hits the reset button, making advances in both society and speculation.