A thrilling new fantasy with an interesting concept.

Humans live in fear trapped in their homes at night living behind magical wards hiding from the Demons. At night the demons rise from the ground and attack the wards looking for weaknesses. The book follows 3 young people each overcoming their fear to fight back against the demons. Humans rarely leave the comfort of their villiages or towns as travelling overnight is extremely dangerous.

I was really hooked by the characters and situations and kept reading desperate to see where the book would go next. It leaves some of the characters in a bad place for the upcoming sequels, but also paves the way to hope for all humans.

Really looking forward to book 2. ( )

I've been eager to read this book for some time now - it's had so many fantastic reviews - so when I saw it in the bookshop, I grabbed it. I'm very pleased that I wasn't disappointed, as so often happens with much-hyped stories.

This is a demon of a novel: it grabs you by the throat and pulls you in from the start, and spits you out at the end, exhausted and emotionally drained. I went through this novel in two evenings, with illicit, snatched readings in the intervening day whenever I got the chance - I couldn't keep my mind out of it, and even now it's still turning in my head. I might have to adopt a policy of not reading trilogies until all 3 books are published: to have to wait so long for the next book (already on pre-order) AND THEN THE FINALE is pure torture.

Brett has built a world so coherent and convincing, and a trio of characters - Arlen, Rojer and Leesha - who are both engaging and credible, so that the unfolding of their stories is as enthralling as an enchantment and as gripping as a boa constrictor. The writing is spare and stark and beautiful, and the descriptions enhance without ever overwhelming the action in the foreground: Brett makes every word of every scene work for its place, and the result is a wonderfully tight and compelling novel.

In this world, there is a very good reason to be afraid of the dark, and this is hammered home in the opening scene through the experiences of Arlen, a young boy intimately affected by the demons' destruction of his community and his family. Through him, we acquire a sense of the dread and terror under which every human must live, the knowledge that in the dark, hope only extends as far as a good ward, and without one, death is certain, slow and terrible. This sense of fear underpins the entire novel, but it is drawn subtly, a deep, cold current inferred from the characters' actions and so deep ingrained in their thoughts and behaviour that it is a constant. Only at the end are the seeds of change sown, with fear starting to turn to defiance and action against the demons. However, one gets the impression that this is only the beginning of the war, and that there are many more battles to be fought.

Those battles will not only be against demons.

The extra dimension here is that, despite the constant fear of demons, humankind is riven by political factions and the delicate balance of power between church and state, and between duchy and duchy, are under strain. The demons are killing humans faster than they can reproduce, and the economies of the duchies and states are starting to buckle under the strain. The ruling classes are looking to consolidate their own positions, with little care to the plight of common people, and the church preaches a doctrine of sin and punishment by demon plague, a puritanical and sometime hypocritical position that does little to lighten the burden of sorrow on the people to whom it ministers.

However, this church also delivers the prophesy of a deliverer, who will come to rid the world of demons and reinstate a peace and prosperity that has been long missing. Into this prophecy, Arlen's decision to fight rather than flee unfolds. His position outside of society - one of the few willing to brave nights in the dark with no warded walls between himself and the demons - leads him to uncover what might be the salvation of humanity. This puts him into opposition with the established church, who will either condemn him as an imposter or, worse (in his eyes), attempt to force him into the role of 'Deliverer'.

It also runs counter to the beliefs and needs of the ultra-religious Krasians who would rather see him dead than admit that the deliverer might arise from outside their clans. Their fanatical culture has strong Islamic overtones, and whilst the use of prejudiced, thinly-disguised stereotypical portrayals of traditional Islamic cultures as inherently evil/tyrannical in fantasy is not something I enjoy - it plays too much to the cheap seats in terms of ticking the box for an easily identifiable 'evil empire' that will both appeal to and strike a chord with a contemporary audience - this one is more well-balanced than most and does make some attempt to demonstrate the effect of an absolute commitment to faith that makes the importance of the temporal world secondary to the hereafter. This dependence both drives and defines the Krasian's outlook on life, and whilst it may have unpleasant cultural implications for non-warriors and those unable to achieve the perfection of faith, it nonetheless highlights the vacillations and hypocrises of the Northern kingdoms and places the Krasians in direct opposition to them - the more so at the end of the novel, which promises to expand the personal conflicts of this into a wider, political conflagration in the next.

Arlen's single-mindedness contrasts well with the other major players in this story. Rojer is orphaned by a demon attack and subsequently brought up by a Jongleur (a jester, or bard) and follows in his trade. Leesha becomes an Herb Gatherer, a medicine woman, for her village after her mother and betrothed betray her trust. Both of these characters, again, exist outside of their society's comforts, though they are important contributors to that same comfort, but neither of them posess the same certainties and determination as Arlen. Their quest for meaning and purpose both contrasts with and complements Arlen's driven hunt, and when the three strands of their very different stories come together to make a single, satisfying whole, the result makes for a powerful, convincing finale to this story.

Like so many who have read this already, I loved this story. I am so excited about reading the next one, I can hardly bear to wait until August ... ( )

Demons rise during the night, preying on mankind and men who are unable to adequately fight back and have no known weapons that will kill demons. Villages and cities are gradually are being worn down with people huddling behind weak wards (runes of some kind that can form barriers) that sometimes keep the demons away. (I wonder what the demons will eat when mankind IS finally wiped out? Apparently it's not a concern of demons, who seem mostly unthinking, voracious beings.) Ages past, mankind had learned to deal with the demons through magical means--wards and weapons that could actually kill demons instead of just keep them away; but after the demons were defeated, an age of science and technology rose and the magic was lost and demons forgotten. Then the demons returned and no tech could harm them, and mankind was thrust back into dark ages of no tech. They have only regained the ability to make weak wards and everything in the past is just legends.

Three young people are featured, growing up and having to cope with this harsh world. Arlen is from a small village where attacks and deaths are a nightly occurrence. Even at eleven years old, he is frustrated that men just cower in their homes, waiting to be attacked. He thinks there must be something to the past legends of ways to defeat the demons. This comes to a head when his father will not step beyond the wards even to help his mother who has been caught beyond the wards by demons.

Leesha is a girl awaiting adulthood and marriage, also in a small village. She, also, comes to believe there should be more that could and must be done. She's introduced to a wider world by apprenticing to the village Herbalist-Healer.

Rojer's story starts when he's three years old. A traveling Jongleur is visiting when demons break through the wards. The man cowardly pushes all aside to squeeze into the small safe space and Rojer is orphaned as well as maimed, losing two fingers.

Much of the book concerns Arlen's early life (and Leesha's too) and beyond establishing some world-building, it can be somewhat slow-moving and not seemingly pertinent to moving the plot forward. Disconcertingly, when things start developing later on there are more gaps in time. This speeds up the plot, but seems to leave interesting bits out. The three characters do not come together until towards the end of the book. The book ends with: End Book I. There is a decent arc concluded before then, so that's not quite so frustrating as it might be. Overall, the first part was not terribly compelling, the characters were sympathetic, but still somewhat distant and their lives not that interesting. Things did pick up, though, but then, as I said, time was skipped to move things forward. It seemed uneven in that respect. But still, not a bad read. ( )

In the genre of secondary worlds fantasy where it’s difficult to turn around without bumping into a cliché, finding a book that feels new and fresh can be difficult. Brandon Sanderson managed to do this in his Mistborn series by creating a unique system of magic that underpins the politics of the world. In The Warded Man, Peter Brett distinguishes himself by crafting a unique world, one where demons rise from the darkness each night to prey on humans who do their best to hide behind magical wards each night.

However, despite the interesting world, this is not a fantasy novel that is content to move its readers through the new (and sometimes gritty) world and show off its wonders and horrors. No, The Warded Man focuses on and follows three main characters whose stories begin to weave together near the end of the novel. While many fantasy novels are about the making of heroes, usually by characters doing classically heroic things, the adventures in Brett’s novel go beyond that and also explore the nature of heroism.

I have a confession. I have had this book for months, an orphaned early review freebie. I read the blurb on the back and imagined a Robert Jordan quality novel with a demon concept that is eerily familiar to those who have read Barbara Hambly's Darwath Trilogy. As a result of these preconceived notions, I was pleasantly surprised to find a book with excellent character development and a decent enough plot. The Warded Man begins during the childhood of the main character, Arlen. The boy is bright and has an insatiable desire to experience the world, but he is thwarted by requirement that he be indoors after dark or risk being eaten by demons. He runs away from home, a risky proposition for ten year olds who do not have flesh eating demons to consider, and he studies the "warding" magic that keeps the demons at bay. The novel also follows the stories of an adolescent girl who escapes an arranged marriage that has lost its appeal by becoming a healer and a young orphan boy, who is raised by a drunken bard. All three characters are dealt hard blows throughout the book, but they are blessedly free of the angst that seems so commonly mistaken by mediocre authors for depth of character.

The Warded Man is a solid work of fantasy. I read the whole book in one sitting at the expense of my very precious free time, and I will look for future works by this author, particularly in this series. I do hope, however, for improvement, particularly in the area of prose and vocabulary. This is Peter V. Brett's first published novel, so some room for improvement is expected. On the whole, The Warded Man is an excellent debut novel. ( )