Daylight War Pb Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
0007276206 | Format: EPUB
Daylight War Pb Description
- Paperback
- Publisher: Harpercollins
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0007276206
- ISBN-13: 978-0007276202
- Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 1.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
Like many other reviewers, I am a fan of Brett's Demon Cycle series, but I was terribly disappointed by this third book in the series. The first book was great, the second book tipped into a bit too much backstory compared to plot development, but was otherwise good. However, with the third book, Brett has completely lost his way. I think "The Daylight War" has three main problems.
First, there is far too much backstory about Inevera -- a character who was already covered adequately by the backstory in the previous book in the series. I did not count pages, but it seems to me that Brett wasted about half the book going over Inevera's past, and only a tiny fraction of that was worthwhile. Brett would have done better to split up Jardir's backstory from the second book across books two and three, perhaps expanding it slightly with the tiny amount of Inevera backstory from book three that was new. That would have made book two better by reducing the amount of backstory, and improved book three by removing the vast majority of the repetitive Inevera backstory.
Second, being titled "The Daylight War", readers of the series naturally expect book three to be about a conflict between a conqueror, proclaimed "Deliverer", and the human cities that he means to conquer. In short, a war of man against man, in the daylight, with the conqueror's claimed goal being to unite mankind under one rule in preparation for a war against the corelings, which would naturally occur at night. However, book three is not about such a daylight war at all. At most, it is about a one-on-one duel, but that duel only takes up a tiny fraction of book three.
Which brings us to the third and worst problem with this book. Almost nothing happens. The plot hardly develops at all.
According to prophecy, mankind will be saved by the Deliverer, a figure who will unite all of humanity during the Daylight War before defeating the forces of demonkind in the First War. The demons that rise from the Core at night will be destroyed and peace restored to the world. But there is a problem: two men have arisen, both named as the Deliverer by the people they have saved. From the north comes Arlen, the Painted Man. From the south comes Jardir, the ruler of Krasia, and his armies of well-trained, fanatical warriors. For humanity to survive to fight the First War, only one of them can live.
The Daylight War is the third novel of The Demon Cycle, currently planned to run to five volumes. It follows on from the events of the enjoyable The Painted Man and the less-accomplished Desert Spear and replicates the structure of the latter novel. Whilst the current-day storyline continues to unfold, we are treated to lengthy flashbacks to the past to flesh out the background of a key character, in this case Inevera, Jardir's First Wife.
In this case, these flashbacks are not as extensive as The Desert Spear's, which were important to add to our understanding of the character of Jardir (who, as one of the two major protagonists of the series, needed such fleshing-out to better explain his actions at the end of The Painted Man). Inevera, though an important influence on events, is not a character in the same league and as such her flashbacks are more succinct.
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