The Desert Spear (edition 2010)

The first of the four sections of Desert Spear gave us a hawk's eye view of life as a desert warrior. Jardir and Abban provided the lenses through which we observed the life paths of the warrior caste and the scorned merchant caste. To their own detriment, the Karsians are living (or dying) proof of Darwin's theory of evolution: only the strong survive. We saw glimpses of the other castes, including the clerics, subdivisions within the warriors and the women (as broodmares in the warriors' harems, as healers, as seeresses/sorceresses).

Jardir acquires the Spear of the Deliverer (less honorably and nobly than he should have), declares himself the Deliverer returned and advances north to invade, conquer, convert and conscript everyone and everything to begin the Karsian version of Armageddon against the corelings.

Jardir overruns the first fort in the North with little trouble and begins advancing on the next rather than waiting a year to consolidate and secure supplies. He leaves the khaffit (merchant caste) behind to do what it does best while he proceeds further north with his quest.

The rest of the sections reunite us with Arlen (the Warded Man), Leesha (Herb Gatherer of recently renamed Deliverer's Hollow), and Rojer (violinist of exceptional skill and talent, especially in charming demons and unruly animals). Renna makes a dramatic comeback from Tibbet's Brook.

While we learn many things about the Karsians, their history, philosophy, culture, customs and religion, we see less character development from the cast of the first novel. However, we are introduced, briefly to two new powerful demon types, who play pivotal roles throughout the story. Of the four listed above, Leesha learns and adapts most, while Renna's suffering wrenched my heart, yet her redemption and liberation satisfied tremendously. Arlen and Rojer seem stunted emotionally in comparison.

A quick read, even at nearly six hundred pages, surging with action and adventure. ( )

3.5 stars. ( )

This is the second book in the Demon Cycle trilogy. I didn’t enjoy it as much as The Warded Man, the first part of the book was really a drag . The second portion of the book really sucked me in though and convinced me to keep reading the series.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was very well done. The narrator does an excellent job of distinguishing between character voices and conveying the emotions of the characters. I definitely recommend listening to this on audiobook.

The first part of the book goes back and forth in time following the story of Jardir, who leads the Krasians. He was a villain in the first book, but here we learn how he rose to power. About a third of the way through the book we go back to Kylar, Rojur and Leesha and what they are doing at Cutter’s Hollow. Some of the story also focuses on Renna (the girl Kylar was promised to when he was young) and her struggles. All of the events are leading to war between the Krasian and the Northern folks.

All of the characters go through quite a bit of character development. I will bluntly say I do not like Jardir and I did not like reading about him. It is fine to want the readers to understand the villain a bit better, but I didn’t need to spend half the book reading his back story...seriously I just didn’t care all that much.

Because of the long digression through Jardir’s back story, the story progresses at a crawl. We really don’t get much past the point where we ended in book one. Yes there are some battles and the story progresses some, but really half of this book didn’t need to be here.

The second half of this book is very well done. The characters and world are intricate and fascinating. I loved the addition of Renna to the story as well, she really brings something special to the story. The Warded Man continues to gain interesting and new powers.

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Why is it that all the featured female characters have to be raped in the story? It is a right of passage or something? Is there a reason why we can’t have a strong female lead that hasn’t been raped, beaten, and abused? Just curious why this seems to be a prerequisite for all the females in this book...
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The book is well written and the second half of the book redeems the first half. Seriously though this is a really, really long book...and it feels really, really long. It wasn’t a fun kind of long either, the first half was a truly epic struggle for me to get through. I can only hope that future books move the story along a bit faster and don’t digress into side stories that are unnecessary.

Overall a decent read. I enjoyed the second half of the book immensely but throught that the first half that was dedicated to Jardir’s back story was an epic waste of time. I have The Daylight War to review, so hopefully that will be a quicker moving read. I tentatively recommend this series to fans of epic fantasy. The characters and world are very well done; the book just needs to be cleaned up and have a more concise plot. ( )

http://beauty-in-ruins.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-desert-spear-by-peter-v-brett-re... ( )

This was good. Much better than the first book in my opinion. You've got the deep characters and inter-character relationships along with lots of action and a spotlight on a new culture- the Crasians. Now at first I really hoped Crasian was short for "crazy Asians" because that could have been really cool. But instead the Crasians are basically Muslims-with-a-twist. Not that I didn't like that but come on, Crazy Asians sound really fun. The culture was really integral to the story and words like Shar’Dama Ka and Inevera gave the book a very exotic feel.

I love the idea of warding and the whole "demons come out at night" thing leaves a lot of room for action. My only real problem with the book was that somewhere near the middle, after focusing on the exciting Crasians for a long time he went back to the non-crasians and things settled into the "Little House on the Prairie" mode again (like most of the first book). It was kind of jarring and not that much fun except for some much needed revenge.

There was one other small problem: the series didn't end. It really seemed like everything was going to be finished and then it wasn't. I didn't know that a third book was already written and scheduled for release in Feb 2013.

Reading the first book is definitely worth it to get to this one. Hopefully the third will be as good (and finish the series). ( )