The warded man book series
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So it's a post apocalyptic world... I can't remember if it's been thousands of years or just a few hundred...
Demons have returned and walk the world at night. Generally speaking these demons should be thought of more as monsters or violent magical animals than fallen-angel type demons. They are powerful, have some magical properties and are virtually invincible to conventional weapons (swords, spears, arrows). They cannot survive in sunlight though, and they are not sentient.
They would have wiped out humanity completely if not for a type of rune magic or wards. Long ago there was a man who lead the humans in a war against them, but much has been forgotten since then, including all of the offensive wards.
Now at night humans huddle in the few remaining cities (five), or their houses in their tiny villages with nothing between them and "the naked night" but a few wards with the power to hold the demons back. Travel is restricted to however far one can move in sunlit hours. Anyone that cannot reach safety or doesn't possess enough lore to craft their own ward net will not survive the night.
Sometimes these wards fail...
The first book introduces part of the world and touches a little on how the demons operate. It follows three young characters with unique upbringings in this terrible world that might have the potential to change things.
It also introduces at least four other characters that will become integral to the story later, and the cultural clash between the five Free Cities.
While there is certainly a "Walking Dead" feel to this world at the end of civilization there is also an important clash of cultures between the southern-most of the Free Cities and the others. Krasia still fights its doomed war against the demons every night. Their society has Arabic cultural elements to it, but also Spartan. There is some religious difficulty, but mostly the books focus on the cultural differences between an honor/shame moral system vs a more western style innocence/guilt based morality. Also there are some very well developed gender conflicts (not like WOT... I know how much you live those gender issues...). A lot of fantasy literature has drawn just criticism for weak, underdeveloped or absent altogether female characters. I have a few issues with Brett's portrayals of women, but for the most part I think his are among the very best in the genre.
The first book is good. There is a lot of action in it, and the origin stories of the first heroes introduced in the story are deep and powerful. I think that's really where the strength of the first book lies is how well these three are developed and how Brett makes you feel quite strongly for them from the beginning. The overall plot seems simplistic in the first book though. I felt like he had given me three fantastic characters in a very intense setting and then didn't take the plot itself very deep... In hindsite some of that was probably on purpose. The next two books develop the plot to satisfactory levels, introduce complexity between the champions of humanity (both the first three and others that may be just as or more important) and into the demons themselves.
I picked this one up the same time I grabbed The Name of the Wind. I think the two male heroes in the first book are similar to different aspects of Kvothe. Heartbreaking backgrounds leading to a drive for something different, discovery of rare or unique gifts... Few authors have made me fall for characters so deeply so early in a novel like Rothfuss did with Kvothe, but Brett is one of them. The pacing of Brett's novels are not at all the same though. There isn't a lot of slow development in this series. Things happen quickly, and there is, as I said, a lot of action.
Wow, thanks for the write-up. This sounds pretty great. I finally went back and finished the First Law series, and this sounds like a cool new series to check out. Is there any idea about how long the series will last? As you pointed out, I didn't like the stupid gender politics in WoT, but I really, really didn't like waiting 15 years to finish a series.
