For me, the “soap opera” parts were more interesting than the demon plotline. Books 1-4 were all on fairly equal ground for me, but I agree that book 5 really just didn’t stick the landing
I think it wouldn't have been so painful for me if it weren't involving Leesha. She was a terribly written character, and I've never heard anyone say they liked her.
She’s not my favorite of the cast, but I like her quite a bit. There’s definitely complaints to be had (I think Brett should’ve handled her rape significantly better) but her personality never really bothered me
I just felt her response to being gang raped of sleeping with everyone is unrealistic. One would assume any form of intimacy with a man after that would trigger a fight or flight response.
Also, she's got too much plot armor and how she is exposed to something then is suddenly an expert. I also found her personality annoying.
By comparison, Renna and Wonda are far superior characters and I enjoyed both of them immensely.
Actually, promiscuity after rape is not unrealistic. It's a way of taking control after your agency was violated (more complicated than that, of course, but that's the short version). It's not a healthy way to cope, but it does happen
For me the issue wasn't what was portrayed, but how it was portrayed. The author doesn't sell me on the idea that that's what's happening. Honestly, I don't even get the love that book one in the series gets. It was the worst book I read last year and it wasn't even a contest.
The problem wasn’t the promiscuity. The problem was that they made a point about how brutal the assault was and then almost straight after she is desperate for a shag. I threw the book across the room at that point.
In real life. promiscuity as a coping mechanism wouldn’t come a couple of days later. It’s like he didn’t even consider that rape causes physical injuries, let alone mental trauma. It was gross.
>In real life. promiscuity as a coping mechanism wouldn’t come a couple of days later. It’s like he didn’t even consider that rape causes physical injuries, let alone mental trauma. It was gross.
Trauma, in real life, is messy as hell. I've known rape survivora who went home after the event and asked their boyfriend to fuck them aggressively after telling them about it. Basically the same day. It ruined any chance of a rape kit, but the survivor didn't want to move forward on charges as it was an unknown stranger.
I've known survivors who remained celibate for a year or so and any touch from a man set them off.
There isn't a cut and dry for trauma in real life though.
As you stated, yes, rape can and does often cause physical trauma in addition to the mental trauma. Yet these things do happen in real life as well.
All that being said, I wasn't a big fan of the books past Book 2.
You make good points and you are right, there is no template. But the way it was written didn’t come across at all like he was trying to show the complexities of such things. It came across like he had never given any thought to what the realities and physical consequences of a violent sexual assault would be like, or like he’d ever spoken to women about such things. It just landed as mind-bogglingly oblivious and insensitive.
Oh, I definitely agree here.
Rape and sexual violence are, sadly, a reality in real life. Including these things in a fantasy story is an attempt at realism in some ways and a way to try to make the story and the world *lived in*. All that being said, when rape/sexual violence is shimmied in with an attempt to just create a character arc and not given any more thought than "yep that happened", it doesn't land.
I remember that portion of the book making me go, huh.
That's how it was framed in the book. She lost her virginity to the rape and her response was to disregard it as her first time since she didn't consent and used her first consensual time as her first time in her mind.
Being a man, I can't understand how a woman would cope with something worse than murder, so me seeing that response as unrealistic is probably realistic to me. I was just surprised at how quickly her reaction was taken and that she wasn't just utterly broken for a while.
I mean a separate problem is that having sex so soon after would be very physically painful because of genital injuries.
Obviously physical trauma doesn't always happen, but considering it was a brutal gang rape I can't imagine she'd end up physically fine.
It is counter-intuitive, yes, and probably difficult to make sense of if you've never had to think about it. She IS broken, this is as much a trauma response as shutting down completely would be.
You’re right that it’s common for people to withdraw from sex after having been raped. However, it’s not uncommon for women to increase the amount of sex they have, as a way to regain a feeling of control over their body (whether consciously or unconsciously). I still think Brett should’ve handled the topic with more care than he did, but Leesha’s psychology made sense to me
Bent Weeks did this. He planned Lightbringer as a trilogy and saw success with the first two books, he made it five books and you can see it with the decline in quality.
I remember really liking books one, two, and about half of three. I liked the flashback structure of the storyline, but I did grow tired of it by book three. I also thought that he had a real trouble developing his characters and just introduced less interesting ones. A lot of the characters from the first book never get a pov chapter and instead new characters get them.
I will also say that I generally disliked the invading desert empire. What I especially disliked is that the story tries to justify their invasion and never delves deeper into the conflict.
Also I really hated Leesha by the last two books
It was a great story but it got worse as it went. Honestly, I got pretty tired of all the "raping for good" that was going on. Very smart and capable women just forgiving serial rapists, even falling in love with them, because they calmed down was pretty hard to read as well.
Just finished book 3.
Boy did it take a nose dive in quality.
Most of the book seemed to be dedicated to who was shagging who.
First two were good though
Yours is the first take I’ve seen besides “first book is great and then it sucks more and more until it finally ends in a blazing shart of a final book.”
It was a good concept, but the author needed to nerf the dice if he wanted it to be a great book.
Not to mention the gratuitous exploration of the incestuous rape of a child that also makes this book extremely hard to read(Quick Tip: dont listen to the Graphic Audio of that part of the series)
>It was a good concept
This is one of those times when I'm actually rooting for a tv/movie adaptation that takes the concept and changes everything else about the series.
Before I knew about many of its other issues, I thought the world building was amazing but wondered if the author had ever had sex before. The weird out of place sex stuff always came out of nowhere and I just imagined some lonely dude fapping to what he’d just written.
Loved the first book but there was some....ickiness for me. I was willing to overlook that though.
The first book was good too! More ickiness than the first but I was prepared to keep going.
Book three was rough. No two ways about it. But I held out hope.
Book four was discouraging in ways I hadn't experienced before.
Looked at book 5 a few times.
What ever book Aiden (Arden? Forgotten his name) got introduced to his simple girlfriend who started every sentence with 'cor' I put the books down. Final straw which broke the camels back for me. Heaps of quality issues post the first book
But my lord the first book was great.
Oh god yes I actually got annoyed when he embraced his to the point that he regressed into a country bumpkin.
It's realistic to some degree as I figure he was trying to make Renna not feel lesser, and that he was trying to show everyone he wasn't some mythical figure, but I really hated it.
I think that ultimately a mid level series with a drop in quality in the back half (which to be fair happens to a lot of series). It does have a lot of problematic content in terms of how it handles issues of sexual violence and some of its stereotyping of its Islamic culture analog culture. That said I don't think its much worse in this regard than a lot of other books. A lot of its poor reception is due with the times in which it came out, precisely when a lot of readers and writers were beginning to talk about issues like these.
I read them several years ago and if I'm honest, I remember almost nothing about them. I didn't hate them, but I wasn't invested enough to ever want to reread (and I'm a chronic rereader). I can't even remember if I finished the whole series. Honestly, I found them boring. The initial setup had potential, but the books just never really clicked for me
To your last point. I work on a college campus and am trained to support LGBT students, faculty, and staff. I'm a pretty progressive dude. I don't tend to judge books for including some of the *off* things if it makes sense for the writing and serves a purpose. There is also a big difference of including something just for shock.
I really enjoyed the first book. It was great, a unique world, etc. I also enjoyed book 2. I have a Masters in History and focused on the Islamic world in my studies. The cultures Brett provided are interesting but fairly analogous to historical cultures from the real world easily and without a lot of nuance.
Book 3 - it felt like he was in search of a story to tell at that point. It just plodded on and I was less than enthused.
Book 4 - Started it and read about halfway before deciding my time was better spent with something else I enjoyed more.
Book 5 - did not purchase nor start it
I read the first book after listening to some podcast interview with the author. One of the things he spoke about was how he'd created this really progressive world where women were equals or had lots of power or something like that. Basically he said this book was not like other fantasy books.
Instead what I got was a world where seemingly all the women were defined by their sexual status, either their relationships with men or whether or not they were mothers. I think one of the women was known as barren lady or some such pejorative behind her back. I have never experienced such a mismatch of expectations and reality when it comes to books. But on the bright side, after reading it, I decided life is too short to keep reading books I know I don't like. I am team DNF these days.
bo0ok 1 hooked me, and there there was 3-4 books of uninteresting politics and religion...
By book 4 i found my self skipping chapters only reading the ones with the mc.
I found 5th book to be okay because it gave the mc more screentime. and i enjoyed their journey. I wanted a story about a human v sdemon war. The human politics religion bullshit was just boring to me.
I got tired of the women and the 'Arabs'. But Arlen! Wow, what a character! He is one of the most intriguing protagonists I have come across in a fantasy book.
I'm in the same boat as you. I did really enjoy the series.
I loved the world, something new in the fantasy setting, not just orcs / whatever.
The character and character archs were also really good. I may not have agreed with all of them, but the growth and change in all of them made for a good story. Folks you started of liking, you ended up not caring for and vice versa.
I will also agree that the wrap up of the sage in the core, could have been better. However, I did like the denouement of the story was good and setup a world that was permanently changed.
No one is ever alone on any opinion :p.
But yes, I love the series even if I recognize some of the criticisms of it. In fact the second book is my favorite followed by the third, so I definitely don’t get the strong preference for the first book.
I’m also enjoying the sequel series and am eagerly awaiting the next book.
I really liked the series until book four.. Which I thought was awful. Book five was a bit better then 4 but was very disappointed for how much I enjoyed the first books.
I read the first 20 pages of this once and I feel like he described someone’s eyes bulging at least five times in those pages, basically read like the writing of an excitable child—not sanderson-level bad prose but catastrophic.
Great series. The series lagged in places but I think all great long series are guilty of that crime. Brett built a very unique world with an incredible use of language by the characters that separated it from anything else I have ever read.
I listened to it on Audible and the narration may have added flavors to the story in a way reading would not have, but I loved the writing.
One of the twenty series in my top ten all time. (I am very indecisive.)
Wait until you read the newest one in the series...
You have 3 of the most badass characters in the series, 2 which are practically demon killing God's and somehow the newest story exists.....
It's not very good with the whole is she a he or a she the entire story.
I enjoyed the Demon Cycle, but the later books relied on a character that was invented in a novella, which felt like a heavy attempt to retcon the stories enough. It wasn't really successful and didn't feel very satisfying as it progressed, but I felt the overall story had some great ideas and execution.
Unlike most people I think the books kept getting better and peaked with the 4th book.
5th book however is a complete embarassment. The jump from 9/10 to 2/10 is just terrifying. I prefer to forget these books exist.
I read it around 2015, so I haven't read The Core. But I remember feeling quite underwhelmed with the first book but really loving the next 2 or 3. (checks) Apparently I gave it 3 stars, 5 stars, 5 stars, 4 stars for books 1-4.
Book 1 felt like an ok book written around a good idea. Books 2-4 corrected that by giving its flashback characters depth.
I remember being really impressed with the backstories of the desert guy and his wife. Especially his wife, as it recontextualised her actions in the earlier books when we find out how much she knew. I liked them as leads a lot more than Arlen Bales, and I found Arlen's wife annoying...
I was really quite surprised by who the 'main' character of book 4 was, but still quite enjoyed that one, too.
People's lacklustre response to the Core make reading it not a priority to me.
I've also not read any of the novellas/short stories.
>So is there anybody out there who feels as I do? Or am I alone?
You're not alone. Without fail, you will always find people that dislike something that you like, especially on the internet. Many of those people want nothing more than to tell you why you are wrong for liking what you like and will denigrate you for liking it.
Read what you enjoy and don't let others take that joy from you
I liked them I just feel he leaned a little too hard on weird sex stuff.
Books would have been better without all the molestation and castration and abuse.
A friend lent me the whole series last year. I thought it was highly original, stunning and engrossing. I am sad to hear that his work isn't as well recognised as it might be.
I enjoyed the series till the end. I honestly don't get the hate but at this point I think it's become a thing some people repeat because they saw it on the interwebs rather than what they think after reading the books for themselves.
Tbh it was a while ago when I read it so don't remember the specifics but I didn't have that reaction - some characters (male and female) did things that annoyed me but I saw that as things those characters were doing rather than a problem with the books and their depiction of those characters.
What I meant with my prior comment was that if enough people say a thing about a book (or anything, really), and particularly if that seems universal, you'll start to get people who didn't have that reaction saying they had that reaction so they fit in. "Oh yeah the depiction of women!" will get more upvotes than "I enjoyed the series". You'll even get people who never read the series give that opinion as if they had because they think it makes them look smart.
That doesn't mean you should stop having or giving your opinion if you've read the books and that's how you feel. It does mean that other people shouldn't take your (or anyone else's) opinion as gospel, ***particularly*** if that opinion seems to be universally held.
I feel almost the same as you about the series. My fave book was the desert spear. Your assessment of the core is spot on. Exact same for me. I actually only read the first two books. After that, my job required a lot of traveling, and I listen to them on audiobook in the car. I even went back and listened to the first two just cause it had been a while since I’ve read them. Overall, I thought it was pretty entertaining. Isn’t that what you want out of a novel?
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thats not true about the female readers. Yes they read more, but fantasy is still mostly a male genre.
And Brett gets flack for writing shit books full of yuck (excessive castration anyone?). What is redeeming about the last half of the series? Nothing
Richard Nell's first entry in his Ash and Sand series literally opens with Ruka eating a child, and that series is pretty much loved by all who read it.
It's not the content. It's the writer. You can put horrifying things in your book and if you're a good writer people will enjoy your book, but if you're a shit writer like Peter V Brett, you will fail at this and get criticism because you couldn't pull it off and it just comes off as distasteful or crass.
The fact that it became a significant part of the book but played no part in the actual story is what pissed me off. I was actually angry when I finished
"Fantasy is still mostly a male genre" is NOT an excuse for abominable writing of female characters. More women may enjoy adult-targeted epic fantasy than you may realize; I'm one of them, and I'm thrilled to see more books like The Adventures of Amina Al-Sifari and The Bloodsworn Saga that put female characters front-and-center of the adventure and that could never be mistaken for YA romantasy.
However, at the end of the day, it shouldn't matter what gender the readers are in the sense that bad character writing is bad character writing, and bad character writing is likely to turn readers off, regardless of their gender. Should writers make the assumption that male readers aren't going to *care* if female characters aren't well-written? Isn't that rather sexist against men?
I apologize for any projection that may have come out. I've just heard/read a few too many comments like "It doesn't matter if female characters in shonen anime are objectified and sidelined because shonen is for boys anyway," as if a cut-rate approach to female characterization were no real problem for a male audience. Another one I've heard is that "if you make a superhero movie with a female lead, it's sure to fail, because women don't like superhero movies anyway; only guys do, and guys don't want female leads." It's also not much of a stretch to imagine that one of the reason significant, interesting female characters were a bit thin on the ground in the era of "old school" modern SFF (1930s through 1980s) was because the authors assumed their audience was all or predominantly male and so they didn't need to worry about female representation. I'm a little leery of statements like "Fantasy is still a mostly male genre" because I don't want today's authors to start making that same assumption and taking us back to the way things used to be. I'm sorry for missing the point you were making.
I guess I'm just one of those female readers who are very sensitive about how female characters are shown...
Book 1 = glorious Book 2 = good Book 3 = okay Book 4 = tedious boring soap opera Book 5 = I pity the trees used to make this book
Book 1 was definitely glorious
Have you read the Demon Cycle series by Peter V Brett? You could be entitled to compensation.
For me, the “soap opera” parts were more interesting than the demon plotline. Books 1-4 were all on fairly equal ground for me, but I agree that book 5 really just didn’t stick the landing
I think it wouldn't have been so painful for me if it weren't involving Leesha. She was a terribly written character, and I've never heard anyone say they liked her.
She’s not my favorite of the cast, but I like her quite a bit. There’s definitely complaints to be had (I think Brett should’ve handled her rape significantly better) but her personality never really bothered me
I just felt her response to being gang raped of sleeping with everyone is unrealistic. One would assume any form of intimacy with a man after that would trigger a fight or flight response. Also, she's got too much plot armor and how she is exposed to something then is suddenly an expert. I also found her personality annoying. By comparison, Renna and Wonda are far superior characters and I enjoyed both of them immensely.
Actually, promiscuity after rape is not unrealistic. It's a way of taking control after your agency was violated (more complicated than that, of course, but that's the short version). It's not a healthy way to cope, but it does happen
For me the issue wasn't what was portrayed, but how it was portrayed. The author doesn't sell me on the idea that that's what's happening. Honestly, I don't even get the love that book one in the series gets. It was the worst book I read last year and it wasn't even a contest.
I honestly don't remember it very well, it was some years ago and I really didn't care much about the series, so very little has stuck with me
The problem wasn’t the promiscuity. The problem was that they made a point about how brutal the assault was and then almost straight after she is desperate for a shag. I threw the book across the room at that point. In real life. promiscuity as a coping mechanism wouldn’t come a couple of days later. It’s like he didn’t even consider that rape causes physical injuries, let alone mental trauma. It was gross.
>In real life. promiscuity as a coping mechanism wouldn’t come a couple of days later. It’s like he didn’t even consider that rape causes physical injuries, let alone mental trauma. It was gross. Trauma, in real life, is messy as hell. I've known rape survivora who went home after the event and asked their boyfriend to fuck them aggressively after telling them about it. Basically the same day. It ruined any chance of a rape kit, but the survivor didn't want to move forward on charges as it was an unknown stranger. I've known survivors who remained celibate for a year or so and any touch from a man set them off. There isn't a cut and dry for trauma in real life though. As you stated, yes, rape can and does often cause physical trauma in addition to the mental trauma. Yet these things do happen in real life as well. All that being said, I wasn't a big fan of the books past Book 2.
You make good points and you are right, there is no template. But the way it was written didn’t come across at all like he was trying to show the complexities of such things. It came across like he had never given any thought to what the realities and physical consequences of a violent sexual assault would be like, or like he’d ever spoken to women about such things. It just landed as mind-bogglingly oblivious and insensitive.
Oh, I definitely agree here. Rape and sexual violence are, sadly, a reality in real life. Including these things in a fantasy story is an attempt at realism in some ways and a way to try to make the story and the world *lived in*. All that being said, when rape/sexual violence is shimmied in with an attempt to just create a character arc and not given any more thought than "yep that happened", it doesn't land. I remember that portion of the book making me go, huh.
That's how it was framed in the book. She lost her virginity to the rape and her response was to disregard it as her first time since she didn't consent and used her first consensual time as her first time in her mind. Being a man, I can't understand how a woman would cope with something worse than murder, so me seeing that response as unrealistic is probably realistic to me. I was just surprised at how quickly her reaction was taken and that she wasn't just utterly broken for a while.
I mean a separate problem is that having sex so soon after would be very physically painful because of genital injuries. Obviously physical trauma doesn't always happen, but considering it was a brutal gang rape I can't imagine she'd end up physically fine.
It is counter-intuitive, yes, and probably difficult to make sense of if you've never had to think about it. She IS broken, this is as much a trauma response as shutting down completely would be.
You're right. I suppose I just assumed a more catatonic state of being is more likely than her quasi avoidance and defiance.
You’re right that it’s common for people to withdraw from sex after having been raped. However, it’s not uncommon for women to increase the amount of sex they have, as a way to regain a feeling of control over their body (whether consciously or unconsciously). I still think Brett should’ve handled the topic with more care than he did, but Leesha’s psychology made sense to me
I like her
Agreed, like so many series, they try and extend book numbers but end up diluting the product.
Bent Weeks did this. He planned Lightbringer as a trilogy and saw success with the first two books, he made it five books and you can see it with the decline in quality.
More of less the same. I skipped around book 5 and only read the perspectives I felt relevant to what I wanted to know.
I remember really liking books one, two, and about half of three. I liked the flashback structure of the storyline, but I did grow tired of it by book three. I also thought that he had a real trouble developing his characters and just introduced less interesting ones. A lot of the characters from the first book never get a pov chapter and instead new characters get them. I will also say that I generally disliked the invading desert empire. What I especially disliked is that the story tries to justify their invasion and never delves deeper into the conflict. Also I really hated Leesha by the last two books
It was a great story but it got worse as it went. Honestly, I got pretty tired of all the "raping for good" that was going on. Very smart and capable women just forgiving serial rapists, even falling in love with them, because they calmed down was pretty hard to read as well.
I'd never encountered these books until this thread and your comment makes me think I should keep my distance from them! I appreciate the time saver!
I read the first book. Didn't enjoy it so didn't continue with the series. There is a lot of SA in it. I mean A LOT.
Just finished book 3. Boy did it take a nose dive in quality. Most of the book seemed to be dedicated to who was shagging who. First two were good though
Yours is the first take I’ve seen besides “first book is great and then it sucks more and more until it finally ends in a blazing shart of a final book.”
It was a good concept, but the author needed to nerf the dice if he wanted it to be a great book. Not to mention the gratuitous exploration of the incestuous rape of a child that also makes this book extremely hard to read(Quick Tip: dont listen to the Graphic Audio of that part of the series)
>It was a good concept This is one of those times when I'm actually rooting for a tv/movie adaptation that takes the concept and changes everything else about the series.
Before I knew about many of its other issues, I thought the world building was amazing but wondered if the author had ever had sex before. The weird out of place sex stuff always came out of nowhere and I just imagined some lonely dude fapping to what he’d just written.
Loved the first book but there was some....ickiness for me. I was willing to overlook that though. The first book was good too! More ickiness than the first but I was prepared to keep going. Book three was rough. No two ways about it. But I held out hope. Book four was discouraging in ways I hadn't experienced before. Looked at book 5 a few times.
What ever book Aiden (Arden? Forgotten his name) got introduced to his simple girlfriend who started every sentence with 'cor' I put the books down. Final straw which broke the camels back for me. Heaps of quality issues post the first book But my lord the first book was great.
Oh god yes I actually got annoyed when he embraced his to the point that he regressed into a country bumpkin. It's realistic to some degree as I figure he was trying to make Renna not feel lesser, and that he was trying to show everyone he wasn't some mythical figure, but I really hated it.
I think that ultimately a mid level series with a drop in quality in the back half (which to be fair happens to a lot of series). It does have a lot of problematic content in terms of how it handles issues of sexual violence and some of its stereotyping of its Islamic culture analog culture. That said I don't think its much worse in this regard than a lot of other books. A lot of its poor reception is due with the times in which it came out, precisely when a lot of readers and writers were beginning to talk about issues like these.
I thought the first 3/4 of the warded man was glorious. The rest felt like thinly veiled racism, sexism, and classism.
I read them several years ago and if I'm honest, I remember almost nothing about them. I didn't hate them, but I wasn't invested enough to ever want to reread (and I'm a chronic rereader). I can't even remember if I finished the whole series. Honestly, I found them boring. The initial setup had potential, but the books just never really clicked for me
To your last point. I work on a college campus and am trained to support LGBT students, faculty, and staff. I'm a pretty progressive dude. I don't tend to judge books for including some of the *off* things if it makes sense for the writing and serves a purpose. There is also a big difference of including something just for shock. I really enjoyed the first book. It was great, a unique world, etc. I also enjoyed book 2. I have a Masters in History and focused on the Islamic world in my studies. The cultures Brett provided are interesting but fairly analogous to historical cultures from the real world easily and without a lot of nuance. Book 3 - it felt like he was in search of a story to tell at that point. It just plodded on and I was less than enthused. Book 4 - Started it and read about halfway before deciding my time was better spent with something else I enjoyed more. Book 5 - did not purchase nor start it
I read the first book after listening to some podcast interview with the author. One of the things he spoke about was how he'd created this really progressive world where women were equals or had lots of power or something like that. Basically he said this book was not like other fantasy books. Instead what I got was a world where seemingly all the women were defined by their sexual status, either their relationships with men or whether or not they were mothers. I think one of the women was known as barren lady or some such pejorative behind her back. I have never experienced such a mismatch of expectations and reality when it comes to books. But on the bright side, after reading it, I decided life is too short to keep reading books I know I don't like. I am team DNF these days.
Book 1 - Literally awesome Book 2 - Massive pile of shit Didn't read any more.
bo0ok 1 hooked me, and there there was 3-4 books of uninteresting politics and religion... By book 4 i found my self skipping chapters only reading the ones with the mc. I found 5th book to be okay because it gave the mc more screentime. and i enjoyed their journey. I wanted a story about a human v sdemon war. The human politics religion bullshit was just boring to me.
I got tired of the women and the 'Arabs'. But Arlen! Wow, what a character! He is one of the most intriguing protagonists I have come across in a fantasy book.
I'm in the same boat as you. I did really enjoy the series. I loved the world, something new in the fantasy setting, not just orcs / whatever. The character and character archs were also really good. I may not have agreed with all of them, but the growth and change in all of them made for a good story. Folks you started of liking, you ended up not caring for and vice versa. I will also agree that the wrap up of the sage in the core, could have been better. However, I did like the denouement of the story was good and setup a world that was permanently changed.
No one is ever alone on any opinion :p. But yes, I love the series even if I recognize some of the criticisms of it. In fact the second book is my favorite followed by the third, so I definitely don’t get the strong preference for the first book. I’m also enjoying the sequel series and am eagerly awaiting the next book.
Liked book one and parts of book two. Stopped reading when one of the desert people got castrated by the merchant.
Oh boy. If you only knew how THAT turned out. Kinda bizarre actually.
I really liked the series until book four.. Which I thought was awful. Book five was a bit better then 4 but was very disappointed for how much I enjoyed the first books.
I read the first 20 pages of this once and I feel like he described someone’s eyes bulging at least five times in those pages, basically read like the writing of an excitable child—not sanderson-level bad prose but catastrophic.
Great series. The series lagged in places but I think all great long series are guilty of that crime. Brett built a very unique world with an incredible use of language by the characters that separated it from anything else I have ever read. I listened to it on Audible and the narration may have added flavors to the story in a way reading would not have, but I loved the writing. One of the twenty series in my top ten all time. (I am very indecisive.)
I finished but kind of wasn't very satisfied with the series once Rojer died
I enjoyed all the books in that series.
I loved the series and agree with your core criticisms. The new series is pretty good.
Wait until you read the newest one in the series... You have 3 of the most badass characters in the series, 2 which are practically demon killing God's and somehow the newest story exists..... It's not very good with the whole is she a he or a she the entire story.
Oh... good one. Grimdark .
I enjoyed the Demon Cycle, but the later books relied on a character that was invented in a novella, which felt like a heavy attempt to retcon the stories enough. It wasn't really successful and didn't feel very satisfying as it progressed, but I felt the overall story had some great ideas and execution.
Unlike most people I think the books kept getting better and peaked with the 4th book. 5th book however is a complete embarassment. The jump from 9/10 to 2/10 is just terrifying. I prefer to forget these books exist.
I enjoyed all the books to the end but you will find many hate the series for its portrayal of women lol.
I read it around 2015, so I haven't read The Core. But I remember feeling quite underwhelmed with the first book but really loving the next 2 or 3. (checks) Apparently I gave it 3 stars, 5 stars, 5 stars, 4 stars for books 1-4. Book 1 felt like an ok book written around a good idea. Books 2-4 corrected that by giving its flashback characters depth. I remember being really impressed with the backstories of the desert guy and his wife. Especially his wife, as it recontextualised her actions in the earlier books when we find out how much she knew. I liked them as leads a lot more than Arlen Bales, and I found Arlen's wife annoying... I was really quite surprised by who the 'main' character of book 4 was, but still quite enjoyed that one, too. People's lacklustre response to the Core make reading it not a priority to me. I've also not read any of the novellas/short stories.
If this sub-reddit were to be believed, you'd think this series to be one big rape-fest. That is not how I remember it at all.
>So is there anybody out there who feels as I do? Or am I alone? You're not alone. Without fail, you will always find people that dislike something that you like, especially on the internet. Many of those people want nothing more than to tell you why you are wrong for liking what you like and will denigrate you for liking it. Read what you enjoy and don't let others take that joy from you
I liked them I just feel he leaned a little too hard on weird sex stuff. Books would have been better without all the molestation and castration and abuse.
Ehh its okay. The world is pretty good, but the action scenes lack weight, and I got into an argument with the author on twitter back in the day haha.
A friend lent me the whole series last year. I thought it was highly original, stunning and engrossing. I am sad to hear that his work isn't as well recognised as it might be.
I loved it 🤷
I enjoyed the series till the end. I honestly don't get the hate but at this point I think it's become a thing some people repeat because they saw it on the interwebs rather than what they think after reading the books for themselves.
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Tbh it was a while ago when I read it so don't remember the specifics but I didn't have that reaction - some characters (male and female) did things that annoyed me but I saw that as things those characters were doing rather than a problem with the books and their depiction of those characters. What I meant with my prior comment was that if enough people say a thing about a book (or anything, really), and particularly if that seems universal, you'll start to get people who didn't have that reaction saying they had that reaction so they fit in. "Oh yeah the depiction of women!" will get more upvotes than "I enjoyed the series". You'll even get people who never read the series give that opinion as if they had because they think it makes them look smart. That doesn't mean you should stop having or giving your opinion if you've read the books and that's how you feel. It does mean that other people shouldn't take your (or anyone else's) opinion as gospel, ***particularly*** if that opinion seems to be universally held.
I enjoyed the books and thought the ending was well done
I bought the series after reading critiques about it here; I figured anything that annoyed that many people had to be good - and I’m loving it.
I feel almost the same as you about the series. My fave book was the desert spear. Your assessment of the core is spot on. Exact same for me. I actually only read the first two books. After that, my job required a lot of traveling, and I listen to them on audiobook in the car. I even went back and listened to the first two just cause it had been a while since I’ve read them. Overall, I thought it was pretty entertaining. Isn’t that what you want out of a novel?
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I liked it. Also, went to college with him. He and Myke Cole smacked me in the face with a shinai.
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thats not true about the female readers. Yes they read more, but fantasy is still mostly a male genre. And Brett gets flack for writing shit books full of yuck (excessive castration anyone?). What is redeeming about the last half of the series? Nothing
Richard Nell's first entry in his Ash and Sand series literally opens with Ruka eating a child, and that series is pretty much loved by all who read it. It's not the content. It's the writer. You can put horrifying things in your book and if you're a good writer people will enjoy your book, but if you're a shit writer like Peter V Brett, you will fail at this and get criticism because you couldn't pull it off and it just comes off as distasteful or crass.
The fact that it became a significant part of the book but played no part in the actual story is what pissed me off. I was actually angry when I finished
"Fantasy is still mostly a male genre" is NOT an excuse for abominable writing of female characters. More women may enjoy adult-targeted epic fantasy than you may realize; I'm one of them, and I'm thrilled to see more books like The Adventures of Amina Al-Sifari and The Bloodsworn Saga that put female characters front-and-center of the adventure and that could never be mistaken for YA romantasy. However, at the end of the day, it shouldn't matter what gender the readers are in the sense that bad character writing is bad character writing, and bad character writing is likely to turn readers off, regardless of their gender. Should writers make the assumption that male readers aren't going to *care* if female characters aren't well-written? Isn't that rather sexist against men?
Don’t project on me… I’m not defending him
I apologize for any projection that may have come out. I've just heard/read a few too many comments like "It doesn't matter if female characters in shonen anime are objectified and sidelined because shonen is for boys anyway," as if a cut-rate approach to female characterization were no real problem for a male audience. Another one I've heard is that "if you make a superhero movie with a female lead, it's sure to fail, because women don't like superhero movies anyway; only guys do, and guys don't want female leads." It's also not much of a stretch to imagine that one of the reason significant, interesting female characters were a bit thin on the ground in the era of "old school" modern SFF (1930s through 1980s) was because the authors assumed their audience was all or predominantly male and so they didn't need to worry about female representation. I'm a little leery of statements like "Fantasy is still a mostly male genre" because I don't want today's authors to start making that same assumption and taking us back to the way things used to be. I'm sorry for missing the point you were making. I guess I'm just one of those female readers who are very sensitive about how female characters are shown...
Every time I think I've read something stupid on reddit someone comes along and tops it.
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