The Daylight War by Peter V Brett (Spoiler free)

This is the third book in a five-book series, following The Warded Man and Desert Spear. The first book was an incredible debut, and the second was also very good and intruging (though it suffered from a slower pace, with more worldbuilding and politics). The third book, to me, was something of a mixture of the three.

On the one hand, like Desert Spear, it featured the backstory of a character that had hitherto been somewhat minor and disliked. The backstory, like in the previous book, established the motivations and some empathy with a character that you were made to dislike if not despise beforehand. I have to say it's interesting, but now its starting to approach authors like Jordan and Martin in terms of how many character POVs Brett is willing to use within his series. The good news is that he really only follows two, and only for brief moments three, story arcs. All of the POVs will be contained within them, which allows for greater perspective and mitigates the slower pace that it causes. And the pace is slow, there is no doubt about that. The entire book (minus the backstory parts) takes place over around 35 days, and until close to the end there isn't much action to speak of. Just more politics, more worldbuilding, and more waiting.

The only other issue I had with this book, and this is something that has been prevalent throughout the whole series, is that everyone has or wants to have sex with everyone else, and everyone is jealous or angry at everyone else for that very reason. I get the point that Brett's trying to make about it all in relation to the world he's building, but it was already annoying by the end of the first book let alone the third.

The good news is that these are little nit-picky things and they're the worst I can say about the book. The worldbuilding, specifically the development of how magic works, is mostly interesting. The politics is probably split 50/50 in being interesting. The character development, for most characters, is interesting enough at the least.

Now for the great news: all of that slower development is at least captivating enough to get you to the climax of the novel, and in fact there are two of them. The first is a large and fairly epic battle, the second is a more significant confrontation between two of the main characters that was long promised. The battle ended somewhat unresolved, giving us a taste and a promise of what even grander, more epic battles are to come. The confrontation ended in a cliffhanger that would give even George R.R. Martin a heart attack. I sure as hell didn't see it coming, and I'm still not even sure what "it" will end up being - it's THAT big of a cliffhanger!

The upshot of all the slower development and the lack of resolution to the climaxes of this book, is that now things seem properly set up for much more excitement in the final two novels. There are two separate wars that need to be resolved, and I am already drooling over how Brett will handle it all. He's proven to be unpredictable, and in my opinion one of the top author in fantasy right now along with Brandon Sanderson and Patrick Rothfuss.

I know some of you have read and enjoyed both of those authors, and if you haven't yet started the Warded Man you owe it to yourself to do so now.

Calwyn wrote:

The confrontation ended in a cliffhanger that would give even George R.R. Martin a heart attack. I sure as hell didn't see it coming, and I'm still not even sure what "it" will end up being - it's THAT big of a cliffhanger!

Truth. Though, he did say he needed to do what no-one expected.

I think what he did, exactly, has yet to be seen. Otherwise it would have ended differently, or at least with a different/further description.

True enough. It's my assumption that it's gonna be a whole lot less permanent than he hoped for though.

Wait, I'm getting confused by our own attempts at not posting spoilers. And I just remembered there are spoiler tags for that reason!

Spoiler:

Calwyn wrote:

Wait, I'm getting confused by our own attempts at not posting spoilers. And I just remembered there are spoiler tags for that reason!

Oh....right.

Calwyn wrote:

Spoiler:

Spoiler: