Demons are here. They come out of the ground with nightfall to pursue, kill and eat any humans they can get their hands on. The humanity is struggling and hasn't been able to advance past the Dark Ages. We meet our hero, Arlen, a kid who has decided to stop being afraid of demons. He'll ride out into the wild and find a weapon to destroy them all, no matter the cost. As you can imagine, it's a tragic hero sacrifice story. The Demon Cycle by Peter V Brett consists of five books and I've read them all. I won't be spoiling things, except those I deem worthy of spoiling to explain book titles.
Demons are generally greyhound-sized creatures that are nearly indestructible as they're infused with magic and can regenerate wounds almost instantly but die in sunlight. They can still be killed, and humans indeed at some point organize colleges on killing demons where these are dissected in search of weaknesses, but in regular circumstances humans are mortified of dealing with demons, so most just huddle behind wards. Fire demons can spit face-melting napalm (kids get wounded too), then there are also water, earth, stone, gravel, wind, mud and other types. Someone should try catching them all.
Wards are symbols that can be etched, drawn or otherwise created on any surface to keep demons at bay. Here's where I already found some inconsistencies, since symbols have to be constantly repaired, realigned and otherwise maintained or demons break through the forcefield. Arlen makes a big point about not fighting in the rain, since mud can neutralize wards on his skin but this rule gets completely invalidated later on, as tons of magical equipment, including armor and clothes, gets produced and works while dirty, damaged etc. In some scenes, demons actually do break through "by finding a hole" in the forcefield, meaning it's delicate business but the writer never explains how exactly a ward projects a protective field and what the rules on their alignment or integrity are; can mud disable a ward or not? Symbologists are taught to create wards and some of them are described as having great talent.
There is very little logic in how or why wards work. They can fail at writer's convenience or completely negate demon assaults. Wards painted on wood can fail if the wood warps or burns etc. Wards stop demons and their attacks but not items demons hurl, despite the implication that there are wards that can react on impact. So, why don't demons simply throw a few pebbles, disturb the wards and waltz right in? Funny enough, demons actually start doing this later on in the series. It will later turn out wards can be gestured in the air to create magical spells similar to Stone to Mud from D&D. What are the rules on wards? I have no idea and the writer has none either. Sorry to be so blunt, but if there's such a fickle technology keeping the humanity alive, they're all dead in the first night.
The notion of precariously maintained networks of forcefields gets pushed to the side in later books, with every single village idiot being able to create a city-sized network of wards from any material (even tents); demons also turn out capable of building their own wards, except those only work on humans. Within the span of a couple months, the entire human race experiences what seems like millennia of progress in fighting demons. How come? It's all thanks to our savior boy, Arlen, the Painted Man.
Arlen feels despisal (yes, it's a word) towards people who try to hide from demons. He takes up symbolism, becomes a messenger (highly sought-after trade due to grave danger at night) and travels to the southern desert kingdom, Krasia. As the name suggests, they're not right in the head, fighting every night against demons they let inside the heavily warded city. A few characters later on mock the practice as idiotic, as people die and get maimed every night, but as long as it gives the writer an opportunity to present battles, who cares?
Arlen finds a legendary spear in one of abandoned desert tombs and discovers it can kill demons with ease. He presents it to Krasians, who realize it's a weapon of their ancient demon-slaying king and take it from him. There is a whole slew of pointless arguments later if Krasians stole the spear from Arlen if he stole it from the tomb first. Anyway, Arlen is left for dead in the desert but crawls to an oasis and tattoos himself with wards he discovered in the tomb. Soon enough, he's eating demon flesh and becoming half-demonic himself, capable of regenerating wounds and ripping demons apart with his bare hands.
I won't lie, this is the most amazing thing I've read in a fantasy novel ever. Killing something with a weapon is passable but killing something with bare hands, especially in a visceral way as Arlen does, by ripping off heads and punching demons to dust, is really satisfying; it shows the fight is now personal. Sadly, this is the entire Demon Cycle climax and it's all downhill from here. There were plenty of chances to explore the "are we demons if we use demon powers?" and losing sanity but the writer simply doesn't have the depth to express these nuanced ideas as they deserve. There is talk about Arlen and others who take up the fight becoming half-demonic and this is constantly approached but never broached in any way more meaningful than "you seem weird, what's wrong with you?"
Well, here the series already starts meandering. If I had to guess, I'd say the writer wrote a really interesting and fun first book and then got commissioned to write 4 more. This meant enormous amounts of filler to reach the word count and it shows from now on. We do get a cool perspective on Arlen's betrayal from Krasian side but the rest is so much Krasian history, hierarchy and culture that I couldn't help but roll my eyes whenever I was met with yet another treatise on Krasian folklore.
It's like watching an action movie and then someone switching the channel to one showing a museum tour. I mean, museum tours can be interesting too but I was watching the action, just switch it back. The title of the book alludes to the legendary demon-killing spear but also to the fact Krasians invade and occupy the lush northern regions that fall with almost no resistance. We're introduced to loads of minor characters that will serve in political intrigue and there's also Arlen's love subplot. The author even says as much in acknowledgments:
Weaving eight active POV characters into a cohesive story stretched my feeble mind quite thin (...)
Krasians believe all men are brothers at night (which isn't borne by their treacherous behavior towards one another for petty reasons, by the way) but during the day they're more than willing to kill and conquer anything in sight. This kind of weasel philosophy made me despise Krasians, who turned out backwards, stuck-up and steeped in senseless violence, and yet they're made into a prominent side in this book. When I say "senseless", I really mean it; even kids get brutalized, their legs get broken and they go through stomach-churning education where they beat each other up for porridge. If you have a soft spot for kids, you'll cry your eyes out reading Demon Cycle. Anyway, Krasians have no redeeming qualities and I cheered every time they got destroyed or just hindered.
Northerners also feature in Daylight War, most notably when it comes to internal political intrigue. You ever wanted to watch the official parliament broadcast in your country for days on end to figure out who hates who based off of backhanded comments and slight tone changes? I can't imagine anyone who would or could, so why this kind of content is in a supposedly action-oriented fantasy book, I have no idea. Expect to read all about how women dress, what they think, what party X thinks of party Y but can't say it etc. Meanwhile, Arlen is given godlike status and can now literally raise people from the dead using magic. Jesus Christ.
I found it funny how the legendary spear quickly became just another regular weapon; it turned out demon bones can be harvested and embedded into a weapon or item to give it the ability to channel magic, which is how the spear itself has its powers. This already started in Desert Spear but in Daylight War pretty much every bum has the equivalent of the legendary spear in some fashion. For example, seamstresses figure out there are wards that can make a human invisible to demons, so every major character gets a cloak with one. By the way, the legendary desert king also had the same kind of cloak. See what I mean? But hold on, in Painted Man Arlen said that fighting in the rain is stupid because mud can cover wards, rendering them ineffective. So, if the cloak gets muddied or has a torn seam, do the wards work or not? The writer has no clue and neither do I.
Within a couple months, the human race starts mass producing anti-demon weaponry and items of legendary quality. Glasses, window panes, axes and much more get wards etched on them, making them indestructible and with other magical properties, such as reading auras. In one instance, a girl even uses wards on chestnuts to throw at demons, serving as grenades or flashbangs; at least that idea was novel and fun to read.
We're also unhelpfully given a glossary on Krasian terms, which would have been nice to have from the start. Try to distinguish between the following (taken from Daylight War's glossary):
Nie’Sharum – Literally ‘not warriors’, name for boys who have gone to the training grounds to be judged and set on the path to dal’Sharum, dama, or khaffit.
Nie’dama – Nie’Sharum selected for dama training.
Nie’dama’ting – Krasian girl who is in dama’ting training but is too young to take her veil. Nie’dama’ting are given great respect by men and women alike, unlike nie’Sharum, who are less than khaffit until they complete the Hannu Pash.
Khaffit – A man who takes up a craft instead of becoming a Holy Man or warrior. Lowest male station in Krasian society.
Kai’Sharum – Krasian military captains, the kai’Sharum receive special training in Sharik Hora and lead individual units in alagai’sharak. The number of kai’Sharum in a tribe depends on its number of warriors. Some tribes have many, some just one. Kai’Sharum wear dal’Sharum blacks, but their night veils are white.
Dama’ting – Krasian Holy Women who also serve as healers and midwives.
Damaji’ting – The tribal leaders of the dama’ting, and the most powerful women in Krasia.
Damaji – The twelve Damaji are the religious and secular leaders of their individual tribes, and serve the Andrah as ministers and advisors.
Damajah – Singular title for the First Wife of the Shar’Dama Ka.
Dama – A Krasian Holy Man. Dama are both religious and secular leaders. They wear white robes and carry no weapons.
Dal’ting – Fertile married women, or older women who have given birth.
Dal’Sharum – The Krasian warrior caste, which includes the vast majority of the men. Dal’Sharum are broken into tribes controlled by the Damaji, and smaller units answerable to a dama and a kai’Sharum.
The Krasian lore just keeps expanding, with no end in sight. If you're going to read Demon Cycle and are interested in Krasians, grab a notepad and start writing down who is dal this or dama that; otherwise you'll just stop caring about all of them, the same way I did. The main problem is that there's no payoff to learning or knowing any of it, the writer just keeps spamming these concepts to fill out the word count but doesn't really do anything interesting with the story threads they imply. I constantly expected something to happen, to have some greater enjoyment for remembering these words but that never happened.
Introduction of magic totally ruins the suspense as well. It turned out killing demons gives the killer a part of their magic, turning regular people into legendary warriors who rejuvenate and can throw each other through buildings. I felt the writer wanted to ride the superhero craze with these ideas and by giving ordinary people extraordinary powers. It quickly loses its charm because Arlen is no longer that special. Wait, who's Arlen? Throughout all of this, Arlen is given a side role at best but at the end of the book he challenges the Krasian leader:
Sharum Ka – Literally ‘First Warrior’, a title in Krasia for the secular leader of alagai’sharak. The Sharum Ka is appointed by the Andrah, and the kai’Sharum of all tribes answer to him and him only from dusk until dawn. The Sharum Ka has his own palace and sits on the Spear Throne. He wears dal’Sharum blacks, but his turban and night veil are white.
This guy, Ahmann, was the one who betrayed him and took the spear but couldn't stomach killing Arlen, so he challenges him to (sigh):
Domin Sharum – Literally it meant ‘two warriors’, referring to trial by single combat as prescribed in the Evejah, based on the rules agreed upon by Kaji and his treacherous half brother before they fought to the death.
Daylight War ends with the two in a clinch falling off a cliff. The party of witnesses descends down to the bottom, finds the place of impact but no sign where either of them went. Well, if you thought it was magic, you were right — Arlen can turn mist-like, the same way demons do, to essentially teleport and he took Ahmann captive. For what purpose? You'll find about it in the following book.
Compare my description of Painted Man and Daylight War. Notice any differences? The former is compact, fast-paced and really exciting but the latter is drab, stretched out and thoroughly unenjoyable. I plowed through Daylight War using sheer willpower but this one is really the worst of them all in terms of bad pacing; not just that, but the book is massive, measuring some 800 pages. I had it in paperback and barely managed to keep the book from flying apart every time I turned a page.
Skull Throne deals with internal Krasian struggle as they have to determine what to do while Ahmann is absent. Here is where the senseless Krasian violence backfires — without a unifying leader, every tribe wants the Skull Throne for itself, leading to a lot of deaths. There is simply no way any people with such a meticulously violent hierarchy would ever survive through internal power conflicts. Ahmann himself has a dozen or so sons, not counting pretenders from the other tribes. This results in throne room intrigue like this:
“How are we to know it was the Deliverer’s wish that his own son be passed over?” Damaji Ichach of the Khanjin tribe demanded. Ichach was ever a thorn in the council’s ass, but there were nods from many of the other Damaji, including Aleverak.
“A fair question,” the aged cleric said, turning to address those gathered, though his words were no doubt meant for Inevera. With Ashan’s claim for the throne announced, he had relinquished control of the council of Damaji, and none dared challenge venerable Aleverak as he assumed the role. “The Shar’Dama Ka did not speak them openly, nor even in private that we know of.”
“He spoke them to me,” Ashan said, stepping forward. “On the first night of Waning, as the Damaji filed from the throne room, my brother bade me take the throne, if he should fall against Alagai Ka. I swore by Everam’s name, lest the Deliverer punish me in the afterlife.”
Hope you wrote down who all these characters were and what their titles mean in relation to one another, or you'll have no idea what's going on. By the way, there are entire chapters that go on like this, with just endless squabbles between Krasian cousins or rivals. Meanwhile, Arlen took Ahmann captive and tries to convince him to find and destroy the demon lair. This also has some cringe moments where Ahmann says whatever it takes to be right and Arlen constantly tries to convince him they should work together by quoting the Krasian holy book, to which Ahmann tersely replies with a variation of: "You grave-robbing outsider". In the end, they do fight alongside one another and it's a flash of brilliance we saw way back in Painted Man.
Other than that, Krasian army starts falling apart and native rebels cause more and more trouble. The invasion is about to unravel, especially since one native army turns out to be in possession of gunpowder and muskets, which just show up one day. There's a new metal discovered as well, electrum, which gives indestructibility to weapons. Why not, just discover all the weapon upgrades in one fell swoop.
In the end, Arlen and Ahmann capture a demon and try to interrogate it, which they somewhat succeed in. This could have been a monumental twist, the idea that demons are intelligent and can communicate, it's just that humans are so wicked that demons have no choice but to kill. There could have been a bleeding-heart eco message squeezed in there too alongside some juicy "No, John. You are the demons" reference, but the writer does nothing with this idea.
So, the two find out the demons are planning an invasion to end the human race. Arlen and Ahmann look at each other and nod – the most natural response is to fortify cities, prepare wards, use electrum, gunpowder, warded weapons, superheroes that have been training on demons, invisibility cloaks, magical aura-reading glasses and other equipment to fight off the invasion; hold on, that's not it? Their plan is to invade the demon lair, also known as the Core?? If you've ever played a real-time strategy video game, you know that fights are initiated from a position of strength, not weakness; fights you intend to win, at any rate. You find a strong position and fight there, not just rush randomly in a haphazard attempt to win. Well, they're going to the Core, I guess.
At this point, I'd like to mention some notable side characters. Elona is the mother of one of main characters in the story. In short, she's a horny MILF that rides around bouncing from one man to the next to cause eruptions of pleasure. She's hilarious, colorful and so interesting, I burst out laughing whenever she had a comment on anything, though at first she does appear brooding and malicious. She's a great example of how good writing can make the reader change his mind on the character. I honestly fell in love with her, though she could use a bit of obedience training before being a proper woman (she cuckolds her husband in the open repeatedly).
On the other hand, Rojer is one of the main characters introduced in Painted Man that can use his fiddle to enchant demons, making them docile, happy, angry, blind and so on. If this reminded you of the Pied Piper of Hamelin legend, that's exactly what it is but again the writer doesn't really make anything novel out of this idea. Rojer tries to make his own band of people with musical talent to ward off demons but regularly fails at it. In the end, Rojer becomes a side character before falling off to marginal mentions and then getting pretty much forgotten completely.
If you're writing a side character, make them as hammy as possible. Elona is just a regular woman compared to Rojer and his magical fiddle but she is so much more interesting and impactful to the story. Especially since we're dealing with a world where demons, magic and legendary weapons exist, there's no reason to create a fantasy-world musician who plays music just like a real-world musician would do, except with a small upside.
You need to set up amazing things and then let them play out, for example, Rojer could have been given an indestructible electrum-reinforced fiddle that can be used as a weapon to bludgeon and slash at demons and then the fiddle gets recharged with demon blood to produce more enchanting music. The magical property of demon blood and the indestructibility of electrum weapons were already established in the Demon Cycle, so the writer simply had to use the two together. As it stood, Rojer needed protection by a squad of demon slayers while he performed his music, which constantly outlined how weak and useless he was. In essence, when you're writing stories, set things up and let the characters drive the story through their behavior, which can be hammy but should ultimately be coherent.
Anyway, in The Core we learn that small villages have swelled, with one village reportedly hosting up to 100,000 people from 300 it had before the events in Painted Man. How do the logistics of this work? I have no idea and the writer had none either, he simply started writing things that ballooned out of all proportion and yet the world seems so small; the map comfortably fits on a single page.
It feels like you could walk from one end of the world to the other in a week or so. We also get an interesting and quite graphic description of childbirth because the writer got his baby as he wrote Demon Cycle while apparently running out of filler to cram in.
I got the strangest impression that it was actually the writer's wife that co-wrote or solely authored The Core. There are so many odd tidbits in stark contrast with the rest of Demon Cycle that reminisce of Wheel of Time after Brandon Sanderson took over. It's not just that, but the pregnancy fetish is off the charts.
For example, three distinct women characters fight demons while pregnant or carrying a child; I mean literal swordfighting while carrying a child on her back or inside her bulging womb. I found this happening with too much regularity to just be author's homage to the process of fatherhood — The Core was written by his wife (possibly while she was pregnant), I'm nearly certain of it.
In one case, a Crasian warrior girl dispels demon magic from her son through the power of her tears (???). If that really worked, just have moms crying 24/7 and repel the demon invasion. Again, that would have been an amazing twist to illustrate the power of women's tears in the real world but the author, whoever he was, simply glosses over it. Oh yeah, there's also a type of stinky weed that repels demons and tea cooked with it genuinely hurts them. It's just now that we learn about it, from a Krasian orphan ninja.
Two minor characters who interacted with Arlen in Painted Man and Desert Spear are traveling back home; the travel and their debriefing of what they saw (magic and demons) with the duke take up 50 pages. What's funny is that nobody believes them, despite them carrying magic wands (as I said, everyone now sports a magical weapon) and their escort having witnessed magical spells being cast. Here we also get the first mention of electric lights. Out of nowhere, boom, electric lights. Soon after, a Krasian woman carries a child with her in search of a long-lost cousin, as instructed by the dice. She sets up a camp and feeds the kid — it takes the writer 6 pages to describe the setting and minutia of what she's doing.
Farewells are being said and plans are being made to fortify human settlements as Arlen and Ahmann prepare to travel down below. Arlen's pregnant wife will be going too, because magical dice prophesied they will fail if she doesn't. See what I mean with pregnancy fetishization? In Demon Cycle, there isn't just one prophecy, but a whole slew of them and it's as easy as rolling dice, allowing the writer to easily circumvent the nuisance of keeping track of who knows what or actually writing meaningful dialog. When it's time for a character to act but the writer has no clue what the character should know, that character will somehow get access to someone wielding these magical dice, with the prophecy pointing him in the right direction. Hope you're writing these prophecies down.
These dice do need to be soaked in person's blood to work but again it's a contrivance that gets easily circumvented because these dice rollers apparently haul whole truckloads of vials with blood. In Wheel of Time, it was the awkward construction of Ta'veren, a person that the Pattern considers worthy of changing the future, but in Demon Cycle, it's just dice. Just like other magical items in Demon Cycle, they get mass-produced by the events in The Core.
It would have been fun if the writer constructed the entire language of dice symbols and then actually showed an illustration of how the dice landed, allowing vigilant readers to interpret plot points in advance, detect which of the dice interpreters have an agenda or get answers to mysteries left unresolved. Eoin Colfer did something similar in all of his Artemis Fowl books, leaving hieroglyphs on the margins as a secret, though ultimately gibberish, message.
Another huge plot problem with Demon Cycle is that elite demons enjoy eating the brains of each other and humans, absorbing their memories and emotions to ramp up their power. Instead of killing the captured demon and eating his brain to find out all the demon secrets, Arlen and Ahmann take him as a captive down the perilous path to the Core, not knowing if he's helping or hindering them. There could have been a really poignant dilemma of discussing whether to kill the demon and eat his brain, especially since other people have tasted demon flesh, with the underlying theme I mentioned earlier — is it OK to become a demon to defeat demons? Instead, we get a few nods to the idea in passing.
On the other hand, demons are also depicted as scheming and insidious, so it would have been a great plot twist if the captured demon genuinely decided to help out human heroes to overthrow the demon court in the Core, except that's not what happens. The demon hostage consistently taunts, mocks and berates humans, who torture him in all sorts of ways, which is another persistent theme in The Core (there are entire chapters dedicated to castration).
There could have been such an amazing alliance here, with the demon deciding to show humans some but not all of his secrets, maybe offer some guidance, just enough to win them over so the human and demonic army act together as the invasion approaches. Robert Jordan did something similar with the Forsaken in the Wheel of Time, who served as tutors for Rand al'Thor before being killed and spun back into the Pattern as eternal servants of the Shadow. Everything Piter V. Brett does in The Core, Robert Jordan (and Brandon Sanderson, God help us all) had already done better in Wheel of Time.
There is some toying with the idea of eating demon brains, and the demon actually says he admires the character that tried it, stating that her spawn will be strong, if she survives (yeah, again a pregnant woman doing the most courageous thing). Brain eating doesn't seem to provide any immediate benefits, though. Anyway, the invasion on the surface rages on and we get entire chapters to the effect. Meanwhile, our main crew is in the Core and discovers a long-lost Krasian city. In here, they get beset by a gang of Krasian battle dogs turned ethereal, which is amazing seeing how there was no mention whatsoever of them before this moment. The crew defeats them by cutting off their claws (they are otherwise immune to everything).
After some scuffle in the Core, our crew splits apart. Arlen and Ahmann fall through the ground thanks to a demonic Stone to Mud spell to find a lost Krasian tribe devolved to Gollum status. In something like 5 minutes, Ahmann teaches them how to fight demons, essentially giving them magical demon-slaying weapons. The pregnant woman rejoins them just in time to see them fighting the demonic court, despite the trip supposedly taking months. Remember when she tasted the brain? It gave her magical directions to a shortcut that only now kicked in — look, you know it won't make any sense, so I better not describe it. Who do you think gets a critical strike on the demonic queen? Of course, it's the pregnant woman.
But, it's still not enough. Arlen sacrifices himself to destroy all demons. Or did he? The final ~20 pages are wrap-up, with surface humans coming to terms with what happened. Children were born prematurely due to magic (of course). Sequels are being set up, with one hermaphrodite kid prominently teased as a strong protagonist. You can pretty much skip this part, it's a huge letdown.
Demon Cycle is horrible and the fact Painted Man is decent makes it all the more bitter. After Painted Man, the quality of writing rapidly deteriorates and becomes some weird mix of fantasy social justice and political intrigue that I found myself flipping through in expectation of good parts. The obsession with pregnancy is just astounding, it's pretty much a fetish by the time The Core rolls around, not to mention all the vile torture and castration fetishization. One good part are the Lovecraftian water demons, except the writer uses them as dumb props in a few action scenes rather than giving them their own character.
Holy mother of all fantasy books, Demon Cycle sucks. By the way, the "demon court" in the Core turns out to be just a cave with a massive queen inside laying eggs. That's it, a cave. Please, don't read anything past Painted Man. There's so much wasted potential, it makes me want to cry. I've read rumors of Demon Cycle being turned into a show or movie series. If that happens, now you know what to expect. Don't succumb to the hype and just read Painted Man or watch the show until Krasians invade; the rest of the books/show/movies isn't worth your time.