Peter V. Brett

A boy lives in a world that is ravaged each evening by demons who appear at sunset and are immune to physical harm, the only way to protect yourself is to create a ring of wards either carven or drawn in some fashion around yourself or property. This creates a barrier that the demons cannot pass through. The majority of his world lives like this, cowering in fear each evening, except for one nation in the desert who performs ritual combat every night in elaborate battle grounds constructed to capture various demons and hold them until dawn (they die if they cannot go back to where they came from before sunrise).

Anyway tragedy strikes the boy and he sets out on a formative journey in which he faces great adversity, gains knowledge, independence and great psychical and scholarly prowess. He uses his gifts to seek out ancient ruins hoping to find clues to the past of a civilization that were rumored to be far more powerful and able to defeat the demons. While continuing his search he finds some acceptance from the culture of the desert warrior people who typically disdain all outsiders as cowards and he is ascribed a special status due to his taking part in their nightly combat and is an impressive warrior.

Eventually he finds what he is looking for and discovers forgotten wards that will change the entire world, they enable the crafting of weapons that will kill demons and confer other protections. He naturally brings this back to his adopted people and finds glory and betrayal in equal measure.

The second book focuses mainly on the protagonists dealing with this betrayal, the machinations of the "brain" demons who show up because the humans are killing their peons and the activities of the betrayer who is hogging all the glory rightfully belonging to the main character. Its mostly a bunch of stuff happening in typical army of light vs dark fashion except that the wonderful element of intense fear each evening from the first book is basically gone now. There are hints of some super demon to come and probably some kind of demon army of some sort of other.

1. Far too much of this book's first half was about who's currently fucking who and who had fucked who in the past.

2. If book two took a lot of the fear away from the demons, this one demolished it. They're not scary at all now and random demon encounters are actually boring.

3. While Jardir's backstory was out of the blue, it did reveal a lot of Krasian culture and his side of things. Inevera's backstory was 99% rehash and didn't add barely anything to the story for requiring 200 pages of flashback.

4. Leesha's personality is all over the place. It's all messed up. Brett's really made her unlikable too.

5. Rojer and Renna sure do disappear for large chunks.

6. Having the Waning Battles be the one in the north and then the one in the south, instead of going back and forth, made for a very weird chapter structure.

7. I still always wonder if I should be more insulted as a guy that the male characters are predominantly written as rapists just waiting for a shot, or insulted on the behalf of women that they're predominantly written as scheming sluts who will use sex with anyone to get what they want in the world.

8. Serious cliffhanger, kind of pissed off about it.

The main enemy at this point is human weakness.

1.) Arlen's refusal to be the deliverer the people need.
2.) Jardir's back and forth between enlightened ruler and despot ruler.
3.) Leesha's condescension towards everyone else and her Anita Blake like Slut/Not Slut dichotomy.
4.) Inerva's reliance on outside forces for decision making and her fear of losing control.
5.) All of the above people's pride versus ripping common sense.

All of those things have done far more to damage the human fight versus the corelings then anything the corelings themselves have done. So yah I could care less about the how deep or intrigueing the coreling princes are at this point. The corelings don't even want to wipe out humanity since they are their food source.

Screw that ending though. I doubt Jardir is dead since Brett hasn't shown a propensity for killing off main characters, but that is where you are going to end it? Bleh