The Painted Man

This is a guilt-based review: I really enjoyed this book and it was hard to put down, so I feel bad rating it as low as three stars. Three stars does not mean I didn't like it, it just means it has a few problems that kept me from liking it as much as I wanted to.

Arlen is a boy who grows up in a post-scientific world plagued by magical beasts with a hunger for human flesh. The only defense against these demons is a system of magical runes that create wards to hold the demons back. Arlen's family and villagers are overly dependent on these wards and the men refuse to fight. Arlen abandons his family after a series of tragic disappointments and gradually learns the art of warding and how to fight demons. His art progresses to the point where he learns some of the forgotten ways of fighting demons. Two other storylines trace the lives of Leesha, a young woman from a similar village who learns medicine at the expense of her private life, and Rojer, who grows up to be a storyteller who also yearns to fight demons.

This is a fast read that had me hooked right away which kept enough momentum to carry through to the end. I highly recommend it, but it has a few problems that left me scratching my head. The main thing that keeps this book from four stars is the pacing: the events seem to hurry from one thing to another in short paragraphs without much description. There is the requisite exposition in the beginning, and the book is easy to follow, which makes for a fast read. It's never hard to follow, but the characters make huge leaps in their situations that would have been really interesting to follow in a more constricted dramatic space (i.e. a shorter period of time with higher stakes and more intensity).

It reminds me a bit of a comic book or role-playing game. As many other commenters have noted, Arlen figures out how to ward his body, and it just works. He becomes The Warded Man and ceases to be Arlen. A story that he totally owns at the beginning becomes just the story of how he's going to kill a lot of demons. Leesha and Rojer dominate the story at this point, which is interesting, but then the stakes are not entirely clear. The title and cover are kind of a spoiler.

There are a few hints of where this story might go, but I had a hard time seeing where the real conflict is. Humans good, demons bad, yes, but is that enough? I'm not sure. The characters also have to fight against the constrictions of the culture they live in, especially Arlen, who is constantly fighting against what people think can be done against demons. He also gets into a conflict with the Krasians over the ownership of a magical weapon, and that is something he has to rise above. It's good enough that I might read the sequel, as at the end there is a hint of the cosmic significance of the demons, but overall the main problem is still just humans versus demons. How are they going to possibly kill all the demons? I suppose it reflects the basic problem that the humans don't know enough about the demons to eradicate them that I as a reader didn't know enough about demons to think this is ever going to be possible. This makes the story seem very self-contained: it makes for good action, but it has very little spiritual impact.

A good read. Not for people who can't stand to see women wearing aprons.