The Daylight War

The Daylight War is not the book I was expecting. Renna and Inevera are now the main characters, while Arlen has done little since the first book other than wander around the countryside punching things. Jardir was elevated from sidekick to main character in the second novel, and while it was annoying to stop reading about Arlen, I was willing to give it a pass given their opposing roles in a possible epic battle.

The back of the book would have you think this is about the ongoing struggle between Arlen and Jardir. It's not. The reality is that The Daylight War is about Inevera growing up and becoming the woman you already know in The Desert Spear. Worse, it retells the events of the last book, but now you get to see what Inevera was doing. Unbelievable. I don't want to spend 50% of every new book learning about someone's past history, and to re-read events from another's perspective is insulting when it's in the sequel. Flashbacks are lazy enough, but this takes it to a new level.

Peter Brett weaved a creative world with demons appearing in the night, but his writing skill is lacking. Not only do we revisit Inevera's marriage schemes with Jardir, all the other characters are dealing with high school relationship drama: gossip, sex, marriage, babies. The worst of these is Reena's B-Plot... she was inexplicably shoehorned into The Desert Spear, and I read her parts waiting for Arlen to show because that was the only way to read about the character I loved from the first novel. Now to add insult to injury, even Arlen's scenes are dripping with relationship drama thanks to Reena.

The last third of the book is what I was waiting for, but it's too little too late. With the majority of page count dedicated to relationship drama, the battles with the demons feel ad-hoc and our heroes unprepared. There's a lot of implied upgrades and preparations for the demon war, but you won't be reading about them because this isn't a book about fighting demons, silly reader. This is about relationship gossip, and who is sleeping with whom! Ah... and when the climax of the book abruptly arrives, it's no surprise that the author reaches for a cheesy cliffhanger in order to sell the next book.

To summarize: the main characters you like get replaced, you get spend 50% of the book re-reading the events of the LAST book, and there's more relationship drama than demon fighting.

Not Recommended.

The second book started with the childhood of the most hated character of the first book. It stands to reason that the third book should then start with the childhood of the most hated character of the second book. It does!

It is as if Brett started out writing each book thinking about "what do my readers not want to read about?" and then writing just that. But it works out, just as it did in the second book. Better, I would say.

The first three books take us deeper and deeper into demon lore. The hamlets in the north know nothing but a few basic wards, and lock themselves in for the night. The dal'sharum have dedicated their lives to fighting demons each and every night. They take down hundreds of demons over their lives. Then there are the dama'ting, who almost never spoke until now and nobody seems to know what they are about. Read the book to learn more :).

The structure here is quite a bit like the first book: Inevera's past in the first half, then gradually back to the present. Her past of course is intertwined with Jardir's which is played for maximum effect. Every scene that we see for a second time turns gains a second interpretation or explanation. This is so well done!

The way we start seeing the more and more powerful layers of the world, so do Arlen, and now Renna, level up in the present. There is a lot of wrong in their world, and they want to fix it. They are super powerful. Is that enough? I really like this theme: could you fix the world if you could beat up anyone easily? The answer is mostly a "no", but they do give it a lot of thought and try to come up with something.