The Painted Man

The lives of ~12 years old kids/teens in remote, rural, small towns in medieval times. Love, betrothals, daughters fulfilling ‘all' the roles of a dead mother, incomprehension of the adult world while longing to belong to it. This book has nothing I care to read about.

The book has at least two small stories, each one with a different protagonist. The first one is a ~12 years old boy, who decided he has had enough of being afraid of the demons who attack their village at night. All the adults says that he should be inside his house, behind the magical wards that keep the demons away. The boy disagrees. After seeing his mother die by the hands of a demon, he calls his dad a coward. As he finds out he has just been engaged to a ‘girl', yuck, he flees from home and goes alone into the wild, risking death from the demons, who are everywhere but comes out only at night.

The second protagonist is another ~12 years old girl, and I stopped reading here.

Among the things that bothered me, when the boy sees his mother being attacked by demons, he runs to her. He should have been killed, but instead he saves his mother life. He did not have a plan, nor did execute any clever maneuver during his ‘attack'. He just went for it. And the conclusion he takes from his lucky victory? Adults are stupid, his dad is a coward.

In another scene, after his mother's death, he asks his father: “And what will we do now?”, the father answers “Bury the body”. And that triggers him. How dare you be rational in a moment like this????

Read 3:17 / 16:54 19%

This is a guilt-based review: I really enjoyed this book and it was hard to put down, so I feel bad rating it as low as three stars. Three stars does not mean I didn't like it, it just means it has a few problems that kept me from liking it as much as I wanted to.

Arlen is a boy who grows up in a post-scientific world plagued by magical beasts with a hunger for human flesh. The only defense against these demons is a system of magical runes that create wards to hold the demons back. Arlen's family and villagers are overly dependent on these wards and the men refuse to fight. Arlen abandons his family after a series of tragic disappointments and gradually learns the art of warding and how to fight demons. His art progresses to the point where he learns some of the forgotten ways of fighting demons. Two other storylines trace the lives of Leesha, a young woman from a similar village who learns medicine at the expense of her private life, and Rojer, who grows up to be a storyteller who also yearns to fight demons.

This is a fast read that had me hooked right away which kept enough momentum to carry through to the end. I highly recommend it, but it has a few problems that left me scratching my head. The main thing that keeps this book from four stars is the pacing: the events seem to hurry from one thing to another in short paragraphs without much description. There is the requisite exposition in the beginning, and the book is easy to follow, which makes for a fast read. It's never hard to follow, but the characters make huge leaps in their situations that would have been really interesting to follow in a more constricted dramatic space (i.e. a shorter period of time with higher stakes and more intensity).

It reminds me a bit of a comic book or role-playing game. As many other commenters have noted, Arlen figures out how to ward his body, and it just works. He becomes The Warded Man and ceases to be Arlen. A story that he totally owns at the beginning becomes just the story of how he's going to kill a lot of demons. Leesha and Rojer dominate the story at this point, which is interesting, but then the stakes are not entirely clear. The title and cover are kind of a spoiler.

There are a few hints of where this story might go, but I had a hard time seeing where the real conflict is. Humans good, demons bad, yes, but is that enough? I'm not sure. The characters also have to fight against the constrictions of the culture they live in, especially Arlen, who is constantly fighting against what people think can be done against demons. He also gets into a conflict with the Krasians over the ownership of a magical weapon, and that is something he has to rise above. It's good enough that I might read the sequel, as at the end there is a hint of the cosmic significance of the demons, but overall the main problem is still just humans versus demons. How are they going to possibly kill all the demons? I suppose it reflects the basic problem that the humans don't know enough about the demons to eradicate them that I as a reader didn't know enough about demons to think this is ever going to be possible. This makes the story seem very self-contained: it makes for good action, but it has very little spiritual impact.

A good read. Not for people who can't stand to see women wearing aprons.

Trigger warnings: Rape.

There are better books out there to read. Better skip this one.

This book sucks! You have 2 men and 1 woman as the main characters, and that woman's story starts crappy, gets better and then completely derails when you introduce rape into it. WTF!

All the women are portrayed that way. The men are all horny bastards. The women are only considered baby making machines. That's literally all they want too. One town has a government system where women serve as officials but that only depends on whether they have kids or not. So if for some reason, you don't have a kid, you can't become a government official and people sort of ostracize you.

I thought Leesha's story would be different since she got out of her town to learn herb gathering, but fucking hell nooooo! I disliked everything. Also, stop calling it her flower. WTF is this?! She gets nagged by 30 different women to just go and have sex with a dude and have kids. She decides she wants to learn instead. Good for you. But then later on, she mopes around thinking she should have just given her flower to someone. Again, WTF

The Warded Man (called The Painted Man in Britain) is told from three character's viewpoints.

There's Arlen, who's tired of hiding from the demons that rise from the ground each night, battering the wards (magic that keeps them at bay but which fail all too frequently). He wants to bring the fight to the demons but all the offensive wards were lost centuries ago.

Then there's thirteen year old Leesha, who's ecstatic at the thought of marrying Gared, until one lie from him destroys her trust and propels her towards a very different goal in life.

Finally there's Rojer, trained to be a minstrel, required by circumstance to travel beyond the free cities, but due to a horrific childhood memory, terrified of being outside at night where the demons are not kept away by stout walls as well as the warding.

As the characters age, they are each propelled towards very different destinies than they once believed. And when their paths cross at the end of the book, things REALLY get interesting.

The writing is incredible. Fast action sequences alternate with stretches of introspection, so you feel you really know the characters - both the good and the bad - and what they're working towards. The world is written with such detail that you can almost step right into it. The Warded Man is an epic novel that comes up with a lot of fresh ideas. An excellent read.

Interesting concept, but the writing was pretty amateur. Juvenile, even – especially the sex-related stuff, the dialog, and the gender type-casting. Pretty much every dude can't contain himself around women, and pretty much every chick is hot. When are we going to get past that stuff in fantasy writing?

This book was a solid three stars. It's a fantasy adventure with lone heroes battling it out against demons and some interesting characters and a fun magic system. My biggest criticism was that the book is called “The Warded Man” and is actually the Warded Man's origin story starting from when he is a child. The title basically explained his entire arch which takes like 350 pages to complete. Also, Peter V. Brett doesn't understand how periods work.

That was all forgivable until the last quarter of the book though when Leesha is violently raped multiple times then two days later throws herself at Arlen and getting super upset when he refuses to continue having sex with her after they are attacked by a demon. God, just typing that sentence upsets me all over again. WOMEN WHO ARE VIOLENTLY RAPED DO NOT WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH STRANGE MEN TWO DAYS LATER! Like I'll forgive writers not really understanding how menstrual cycles work, but this just ruined anything I liked about the book. I really couldn't recommend this book to anyone at this point. It was kind of forgettable fantasy that then just turned gross.

The Warded Man is a fantastic fantasy novel, and an excellent introduction to the world the Brett has crafted that feels similar to our own world, and yet very different. From early in the novel you can feel a strong connection with all of the POV Characters, and get a feeling for the bleakness of the world as it stands.

My only reluctance towards to book is that if feels like the majority of the story is all a prologue for the last 20% of the book. While I am looking forward to reading the other novels in the series, I think I would be less satisfied if I wasn't able to dive into the subsequent volumes immediately.

At sunset, demons rise from the Core, hunting humans. Wards are placed on homes to keep them away, but every night more humans die. They feel helpless against the corelings. They have no way to fight back. Stories have begun popping up about The Warded Man. They say he kills corelings. Maybe there is a chance for humans after all. I absolutely loved this book. Such a great story, and I found myself totally invested in the characters.

I absolutely love the premise of this book. I'm a sucker for human's being the underdog and the prey. So this book was right up my ally with a world where demons owned the night and humans had to hide in their buildings behind wards. Wards that have to be set up precisely and if the lines are marred by a substance become ineffective. This makes an enemy out of things like mud, rain, dirt etc. Anything that can potentially break the perfect line's drawn.

I enjoyed our main character standing up and deciding he was done hiding. And some great battles (the last one in particular) provided heart pumping action. Yet...I find this book extremely frustrating. For starters, it feels to me like the author uses time jumps as a cheap way to develop his characters. Why write development when you can merely fast forward x number of years? This occurs several times over, in particular with Arlen who each time emerges as something more than he was...but you only read snippets of how he got there and that leaves something to be desired.

The second reason is because rape. Authors rarely handle rape well in their stories, fantasy authors even more rarely, and this most definitely is not an exception to the rule.
Leesha is one of our main point of view characters and a big point is made that she's a virgin. You see child bearing in this world is of utmost importance because of how many people the demon's kill. So her being a virgin is a significant deal, but none the less, she wants it to be with someone special. Understandable, but unfortunately near the end of the book, while on the road traveling she is robbed and raped by bandits. My immediate thought to this is “uh oh, fantasy rarely does this type of trauma right” and lo and behold, a day or two later Leesha is completely over this traumatic experience. So much so that Arlen (another main character) whom she's only know for a couple days...she's ready to have a romp in the mud with him. The demon intervenes so their sex is disturbed, but how quickly all this transpires is a joke. How lightly rape is taken is a joke.But it does not end there... apparently she has significant feelings for Arlen (again known him for a couple days) for reasons and now wants to have his baby. This all occurs in the span of 20 pages...but their romance and sexual tension is pretty much all but said will continue through the next book  

The above was so frustrating to me that this book went from a 3.5 or so and absolutely nosedived. It overshadowed any of the positive feelings I'd had up to that point. People I've spoken to about the series have said that stuff like this becomes more prevalent each book, so I won't be continuing on. To bad, because I really was sold on the premise.

One of the best books I've read since [b:The Lies of Locke Lamora 127455 The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1) Scott Lynch http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320532483s/127455.jpg 2116675]. An excellent story, wonderful character development, and an incredibly captivating world. Well worth a read if not several.

The first of a trilogy, The Warded Man takes place in a world where the human population is dwindling. As soon as the sun sinks below the horizon the demons emerge. The humans are protected by various magical wards that repel the wood, fire, sand, swamp, and wind demons. But if a ward circle is improperly painted or hidden my mud... the legion of demons can enter and feast on the tasty humans. This story focuses on three individuals that will take the fight to the demons. The characters are very compelling and the tale is deftly told. I enjoyed this story very much and will eagerly look forward to completing this trilogy.

So I had to re-read this book as I picked up the second book and got about a quarter of the way through it and I didn't remember much about the characters from the first book. I think that I enjoyed it more the second time because I will probably change my rating from a 3 to a 4. I wonder if this is because I read a ways into the 2nd book and I saw more to the story and saw more promise. I'm interested in going forward and seeing where the self discovery of the main characters go because this book is less about the demons and more about where the characters started. The series seems to be developing a larger scope so I'm looking forward to it.

A good 4.5 out of 5.

A really good concept, with a great plot. Not full of happy fun times, with some gritty action scenes and unexpected plot twists. Set up well for the future books, I'll definitely be checking them out.

Missing the .5 of a star just because I felt that there was a slightly unnecessary amount of sexy time which didn't always add to the story.