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3.95 AVERAGE
3.95 AVERAGE
I've finally finished the series, though I confess, I skimread an awful lot of this. Rather than review this book in isolation, I want to collect together my thoughts about the series as a whole.
I was to use one word to describe the series it would be "squandered". The first book was excellent, each book was progressively worse. Most people disagree with me, they think that the final book reverses the trend of the previous 2 books, I disagree. It certainly contains more action, but most of it is gratuitous, and by that I don't mean to be prudish, gratuitous in that it served no narrative purpose, was drawn out and honestly pretty tensionless. If I'd felt more emotionally involved with the characters by the end, I would possibly have felt different, but in toto, the series was an unstructured mess that didn't really understand it's own themes, it lacked purpose or direction.
What did the book do wrong.
Magic - the opening book was so good because each of the characters felt defenceless and vulnerable. As the series progressed, the magic "system" came into evidence and it was poorly thought through. There were insufficient stops placed on it, it had positive feedback loops and snowballed out of control quickly. This meant that once vulnerable characters felt invincible and invincible characters were boring. This was tackled in the second book with the introduction of mind demons and inter human conflict. Two magical powers really bothered me though. Forecasting with the dice and aura reading. The former was used for a lot of lazy foreshadowing and robbed the book of a lot of tension, the latter switched large sections of the book from being a tight humane limited 3rd person POV to really unpleasantly pervasive omniscient. Both actively damaged the reading experience.
Action used as a substitute for drama - The scene that really drove this home occurred in this book. When one character met another, one they've not encountered personally since childhood, they insisted on fighting to demonstrate their identity. This was totally gratuitous, and just one example of the weaknesses in this book. Almost every major scene of conflict was resolved with grandstanding progressing to sharusahk, a word I'm only too glad I won't have to read again. Might is right is boring and given the book had long established dominance pattern each conflict felt predictable, safe and pointless.
Characterisation - Simply put, it was weak. In the first book, there was plenty of character growth, that's because the book was essentially a collection of coming of age stories that wove into a single story at the end. When we moved to desert spear, we get to flesh out Ahmann's story, which humanised a major bad guy from book 1, so it really worked. Book 3 we see a much thinner slice of Inevera's story, that has a very similar structure. By the time we hit book 4, with Ashia's story, I was fed up, and it undermined how I felt about the previous two books as it followed an identical formula. If we set aside the back history, in the actual plotline, characterisation is paper thin, particularly towards the end. People continue to behave in broadly predictable ways, no real surprises occur, and the growth of characters often feels inorganic. The nascent feminism at the end felt artificial, bolted on. Too much time was devoted to key characters dominating supporting characters, the book lacked any dramatic antagonism, it just had the pervasive threat of the demons.
I kept pushing on with the series, thinking it would get better, but the only thing I'm happy with about the ending is that I don't need to read it any more. I only pressed on out of sheer bloody mindedness. If I had my time again, I'd read the first book and enjoy savouring all it's potential and not spoil it by attempting to experience it.
I was to use one word to describe the series it would be "squandered". The first book was excellent, each book was progressively worse. Most people disagree with me, they think that the final book reverses the trend of the previous 2 books, I disagree. It certainly contains more action, but most of it is gratuitous, and by that I don't mean to be prudish, gratuitous in that it served no narrative purpose, was drawn out and honestly pretty tensionless. If I'd felt more emotionally involved with the characters by the end, I would possibly have felt different, but in toto, the series was an unstructured mess that didn't really understand it's own themes, it lacked purpose or direction.
What did the book do wrong.
Magic - the opening book was so good because each of the characters felt defenceless and vulnerable. As the series progressed, the magic "system" came into evidence and it was poorly thought through. There were insufficient stops placed on it, it had positive feedback loops and snowballed out of control quickly. This meant that once vulnerable characters felt invincible and invincible characters were boring. This was tackled in the second book with the introduction of mind demons and inter human conflict. Two magical powers really bothered me though. Forecasting with the dice and aura reading. The former was used for a lot of lazy foreshadowing and robbed the book of a lot of tension, the latter switched large sections of the book from being a tight humane limited 3rd person POV to really unpleasantly pervasive omniscient. Both actively damaged the reading experience.
Action used as a substitute for drama - The scene that really drove this home occurred in this book. When one character met another, one they've not encountered personally since childhood, they insisted on fighting to demonstrate their identity. This was totally gratuitous, and just one example of the weaknesses in this book. Almost every major scene of conflict was resolved with grandstanding progressing to sharusahk, a word I'm only too glad I won't have to read again. Might is right is boring and given the book had long established dominance pattern each conflict felt predictable, safe and pointless.
Characterisation - Simply put, it was weak. In the first book, there was plenty of character growth, that's because the book was essentially a collection of coming of age stories that wove into a single story at the end. When we moved to desert spear, we get to flesh out Ahmann's story, which humanised a major bad guy from book 1, so it really worked. Book 3 we see a much thinner slice of Inevera's story, that has a very similar structure. By the time we hit book 4, with Ashia's story, I was fed up, and it undermined how I felt about the previous two books as it followed an identical formula. If we set aside the back history, in the actual plotline, characterisation is paper thin, particularly towards the end. People continue to behave in broadly predictable ways, no real surprises occur, and the growth of characters often feels inorganic. The nascent feminism at the end felt artificial, bolted on. Too much time was devoted to key characters dominating supporting characters, the book lacked any dramatic antagonism, it just had the pervasive threat of the demons.
I kept pushing on with the series, thinking it would get better, but the only thing I'm happy with about the ending is that I don't need to read it any more. I only pressed on out of sheer bloody mindedness. If I had my time again, I'd read the first book and enjoy savouring all it's potential and not spoil it by attempting to experience it.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
This series was hard 10! I'll be Core-Spawned if I could find a flaw in it and if you got to book 5 I'm guessing you're as hooked as I am and need to know the fate of Arlen, Jadir, Leesha and all of Thesa. When I read reviews of the Warded Man I saw more than a few complain about sexism, or how a fictitious semi-muslim people were portrayed. Or they complained about the rape scenes or incest. In my humble opinion none of that detracted from the story and all was that was to build the backstory of main characters and world at large. I get it, people are sensitive, and need trigger warnings and safe spaces. But to the core with all that. You don't like it, that's your business but I loved this series.
A satisfying end to a series (a series that didn't outstay its welcome, unlike some I could mention...)
With the large cast of characters, including some who hadn't appeared for a while, I found it a little difficult to remember who was who - there's an argument for the classic quest, with main characters staying together - and a who's who might have helped, but I managed.
Again the action sequences were well-written, while some of the character pieces were a little soap operatic. My one concern about the story - that the world must be bigger than the book's map - was dealt with in one sentence in the finale, a finale that, it has to be said, resonates slightly with that of Aliens.
With the large cast of characters, including some who hadn't appeared for a while, I found it a little difficult to remember who was who - there's an argument for the classic quest, with main characters staying together - and a who's who might have helped, but I managed.
Again the action sequences were well-written, while some of the character pieces were a little soap operatic. My one concern about the story - that the world must be bigger than the book's map - was dealt with in one sentence in the finale, a finale that, it has to be said, resonates slightly with that of Aliens.
Sadly, I'm quite disappointed with this one. I read the Painted Man in almost one sitting, and enjoyed all the books in the series a lot. The last one not only was least enjoyable, but also I didn't really like how everything resolved.
My biggest issue is the number of the POV. We jump between cities, not only trying to remeber who everybody was, but aslo basically replaying the same battles over and over again. We barely visited Miln after Arlen left, did we really have to spend so much time with Elissa and Ragen? Some specific scenes were neat, but they could be easily combined into one, more coherent storyline. In the end I skimmed over the fight scenes, there were so much of them.
After so much of build up the final resolution of Arlens and Jardir journey felt rushed, and I wasn't happy how some other storylines ended either (Abban's and Inevera's moslty).
This would do a nice action movie, but as an 800 pages book it didn't live up to my expectations.
My biggest issue is the number of the POV. We jump between cities, not only trying to remeber who everybody was, but aslo basically replaying the same battles over and over again. We barely visited Miln after Arlen left, did we really have to spend so much time with Elissa and Ragen? Some specific scenes were neat, but they could be easily combined into one, more coherent storyline. In the end I skimmed over the fight scenes, there were so much of them.
After so much of build up the final resolution of Arlens and Jardir journey felt rushed, and I wasn't happy how some other storylines ended either (Abban's and Inevera's moslty).
This would do a nice action movie, but as an 800 pages book it didn't live up to my expectations.
Bittersweet ending. I cried and laughed numerous times throughout the book. After a long wait to finally read it, I was so thrilled simply to be immersed in the world of Arlen again. I wish the last few chapters had gone on longer! Loved it though, a fitting end.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
Loveable characters:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Religious bigotry
I want to start out that I did the previous four books back-to-back and even though I complained about the expansion of POV characters in my previous reviews, it was at least bearable since it wasn't that hard to place everyone in the world. However, a year on since I finished #4, I forgot about everyone except the main handful of characters. This made a large percentage of the book a really tedious experience, not only because I didn't know or care about all the minor characters and their little squabbles, but mostly because their struggles essentially became trivial and repetitive. None of their plots moved the main story along. Every action scene was simply there for the sake of having an action scene and apart from one or two notable sequences, they all played out exactly the same.
Another gripe from the previous books that got exasperated in this one is the overpowered and arbitrary magic system. I enjoyed the first book because the magic was well defined and everyone played by its rules. Once the author found that he needed more variety and intrigue in the story, he chose to add it in via expanding the magic system instead of creating interesting story elements. So by the time we get to this concluding book, we're left with every female character being pregnant and a magic system being used as a deus ex machina for any difficult situation, from being an easy healing source to creating food when the author doesn't want people carrying around packs of supplies on their long journey.
The author is at least a decent writer and while I have a lot of complaints about the story and world, the characters have consistently been well developed and unique. This is still an unnecessarily long book due to trying to cram in every Joe, Jack and Sally, along with their entire extended family into the story though. I think about 20% of the book is dedicated to the actual protagonists and that's a damn shame because those were pretty much the only enjoyable parts of the book for me, probably because they were the only parts that actually mattered to the outcome. If that ratio were reversed, not only could this series have been a more reasonable three books long, but would then have been more engaging and entertaining as well.
There have been a lot of bad writing choices since the end of the first book and this disappointing ending to the series was pretty much inevitable. The author tried desperately hard to cover up the story's shortcomings with constant action, lots of sex and endless bickering, but ultimately it was very obvious just how shallow the story had become. To be honest, I think I was probably over this series somewhere back during the second book, but all the untapped potential kept me coming back and by the time it came to doing the fourth and fifth books, it was more a matter of following through with the time investment, sunk cost fallacy be damned.
When you create a new tribe where every guy has to have their genitals chopped off in order to join and instead of having an immediate revolt on your hands, your tribe instead grows larger with actual volunteers..... 
Another gripe from the previous books that got exasperated in this one is the overpowered and arbitrary magic system. I enjoyed the first book because the magic was well defined and everyone played by its rules. Once the author found that he needed more variety and intrigue in the story, he chose to add it in via expanding the magic system instead of creating interesting story elements. So by the time we get to this concluding book, we're left with every female character being pregnant and a magic system being used as a deus ex machina for any difficult situation, from being an easy healing source to creating food when the author doesn't want people carrying around packs of supplies on their long journey.
The author is at least a decent writer and while I have a lot of complaints about the story and world, the characters have consistently been well developed and unique. This is still an unnecessarily long book due to trying to cram in every Joe, Jack and Sally, along with their entire extended family into the story though. I think about 20% of the book is dedicated to the actual protagonists and that's a damn shame because those were pretty much the only enjoyable parts of the book for me, probably because they were the only parts that actually mattered to the outcome. If that ratio were reversed, not only could this series have been a more reasonable three books long, but would then have been more engaging and entertaining as well.
There have been a lot of bad writing choices since the end of the first book and this disappointing ending to the series was pretty much inevitable. The author tried desperately hard to cover up the story's shortcomings with constant action, lots of sex and endless bickering, but ultimately it was very obvious just how shallow the story had become. To be honest, I think I was probably over this series somewhere back during the second book, but all the untapped potential kept me coming back and by the time it came to doing the fourth and fifth books, it was more a matter of following through with the time investment, sunk cost fallacy be damned.
The Warded Man was awesome and promised great things, but the sequels went in a different direction than I was expecting.
Instead of the humans vs demons fight, we spend way more time on the humans vs humans front - Krasians vs Thesans. While this culture clash is well done and interesting in its own right, it took up way too many pages for my taste.
Instead of following mostly Arlen, Leesha and Rojer, we're introduced to a huge cast of characters. That's not a bad thing per se, but some of them were not really that interesting or consequential to the plot and most importantly the ones that I wanted to follow the most - Arlen and Jardir - are all but absent in one of the books.
Flawed but good, I don't regret spending 3500+ pages in Peter V. Brett's world.
Instead of the humans vs demons fight, we spend way more time on the humans vs humans front - Krasians vs Thesans. While this culture clash is well done and interesting in its own right, it took up way too many pages for my taste.
Instead of following mostly Arlen, Leesha and Rojer, we're introduced to a huge cast of characters. That's not a bad thing per se, but some of them were not really that interesting or consequential to the plot and most importantly the ones that I wanted to follow the most - Arlen and Jardir - are all but absent in one of the books.
Flawed but good, I don't regret spending 3500+ pages in Peter V. Brett's world.
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes