The Painted Man: The Demon Cycle, Book 1

This is a brilliant piece of work, I read the book a few years ago, a book I always seem to come back to, so decided to purchase the audio book as I have a big commute. The narration of Colin Mace coupled with the extraordinary imagination and true craftsmanship of Peter V. Brett's work - A stunning combination of writing and storytelling. I've listened to all the books in the series and will come back to them again and again. I have listened to 100s of audiobooks now and must say that in some cases the quality of the narration can really let a great book down, so much so that the whole experience leaves you frustrated - I can assure you, all you will be getting from this book is a hunger for more, only trouble being, the bar is set so high here your expectations for your next audiobook will be very high indeed.

This book tops the fantasy apprentice genre. It does it by building on a classic idea – demons that rise from the ground to plague humanity. While I like 'The Painted Man', a more descriptive title would be: The Demon-slayer Apprentice. A child apprenticing to a wise older mentor is a well-trodden (and often banal) fantasy trope, but this rises to the top because it’s well written and doesn’t overplay the fantasy ingredient.The elemental demons rise every night and provide a strong back-drop to the character action. The book follows three characters: Arlen, a boy who apprentices to a master warder (wards keep the demons at bay); Leesha, a herb gathering healer, and Rojer, wounded by demons as a youngster.With the exception of the memorably cantankerous Bruna, few of the characters leap off the page but you end up rooting for all of them; Leesha is the strongest. Five stars for taking a moribund genre and injecting new life into it.

If you like well written female characters you definitely won’t find them here. If you like well researched content you won’t find it here.As a tattooist I find the scene where he tattoos himself just ridiculous. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone unfortunate enough to purchase this but trust me when I say the inaccuracy is breathtaking, not to mention illogical.The female characters have nothing in their lives outside of wanting babies and thinking about their relationships to men. The main character is supposed to come across as complicated and can’t be tied down, he mostly just seems arrogant and a bit stupid. Oh and trigger warning there is rape as is now the fashion in fantasy. Would be great if Amazon would have enough respect for rape survivors to provide trigger warnings for books that contain explicit sexual assault scenes. The author has obviously not mustered any compassion as those particular scenes are a very poor representation of the reality and really do a disservice to any who have lived through such ordeals.