The Painted Man

I absolutely love the premise of this book. I'm a sucker for human's being the underdog and the prey. So this book was right up my ally with a world where demons owned the night and humans had to hide in their buildings behind wards. Wards that have to be set up precisely and if the lines are marred by a substance become ineffective. This makes an enemy out of things like mud, rain, dirt etc. Anything that can potentially break the perfect line's drawn.

I enjoyed our main character standing up and deciding he was done hiding. And some great battles (the last one in particular) provided heart pumping action. Yet...I find this book extremely frustrating. For starters, it feels to me like the author uses time jumps as a cheap way to develop his characters. Why write development when you can merely fast forward x number of years? This occurs several times over, in particular with Arlen who each time emerges as something more than he was...but you only read snippets of how he got there and that leaves something to be desired.

The second reason is because rape. Authors rarely handle rape well in their stories, fantasy authors even more rarely, and this most definitely is not an exception to the rule.
Leesha is one of our main point of view characters and a big point is made that she's a virgin. You see child bearing in this world is of utmost importance because of how many people the demon's kill. So her being a virgin is a significant deal, but none the less, she wants it to be with someone special. Understandable, but unfortunately near the end of the book, while on the road traveling she is robbed and raped by bandits. My immediate thought to this is “uh oh, fantasy rarely does this type of trauma right” and lo and behold, a day or two later Leesha is completely over this traumatic experience. So much so that Arlen (another main character) whom she's only know for a couple days...she's ready to have a romp in the mud with him. The demon intervenes so their sex is disturbed, but how quickly all this transpires is a joke. How lightly rape is taken is a joke.But it does not end there... apparently she has significant feelings for Arlen (again known him for a couple days) for reasons and now wants to have his baby. This all occurs in the span of 20 pages...but their romance and sexual tension is pretty much all but said will continue through the next book  

The above was so frustrating to me that this book went from a 3.5 or so and absolutely nosedived. It overshadowed any of the positive feelings I'd had up to that point. People I've spoken to about the series have said that stuff like this becomes more prevalent each book, so I won't be continuing on. To bad, because I really was sold on the premise.